"The fact is," he confessed, "it hasn't gone so far as that yet—it's beginning; all it wants is time, you know—time, and being let alone."
"All Time will be before us, when once your lips have pronounced the words of surrender, and our spirits are transported together to the enchanted isle."
"You talk about me going over to this isle—this Cyprus," he said; "but it's a long journey, and I can't afford it. How you come and go, I don't know; but I've not been brought up to it myself. I can't flash across like a telegram!"
"Trust all to me," she said. "Is not your love strong enough for that?"
"Not quite yet," he answered; "it's coming on. Only, you see, it's a serious step to take, and I naturally wish to feel my way. I declare, the more I gaze upon the—the elegant form and figger which I see before me, the stronger and the more irresistible comes over me a burning desire to think the whole thing carefully over. And if you only allowed me a little longer to gaze (I've no time to myself except in the evenings), I don't think it would be long before this affair reached a 'appy termination—I don't indeed!"
"Gaze, then," she said, smiling—"gaze to your soul's content."
"I mean no offence," he represented, having felt his way to a stroke of supreme cunning, "but when I feel there's a goddess inside of this statue, I don't know how it is exactly, but it puts me off. I can't fix my thoughts; the—the passion don't ferment as it ought. If, supposing now, you was to withdraw yourself and leave me the statue? I could gaze on it, and think of thee, and Cyprus, and all the rest of it, more comfortable, so to speak, than what I can when you're animating of it, and making me that nervous, words can't describe it!"
He hardly dared to hope that so lame and transparent a device would succeed with her; but, as he had previously found, there was a certain spice of credulity and simplicity in her nature, which made it possible to impose upon her occasionally.
"It may be so," she said. "I overawe thee, perchance?"
"Very much so," said he, promptly. "You don't intend it, I know; but it's a fact."