He stopped, seeking an expression which he could not find immediately.
“Have I dear ways?” Mamie asked with a little laugh. “I never knew it before—but since you say so——”
“It is only those who love us that know the best of us. We never know it ourselves.”
“Do you love me, George?” The question was put to him for the thousandth time. To her it seemed always new and the answer was always full of interest, as though it had never been given before.
“Very dearly.” George laid his hand upon her slender fingers and pressed them softly. He had abandoned the attempt to give her an original reply at each repetition of the inquiry.
“Is that all?” she asked, pretending to be disappointed, but smiling with her grey eyes.
“Can a man say more and mean it?” George inquired gravely. Then he laughed. “The other day,” he continued, “I was in a train on the Elevated Road. There was a young couple opposite to me—the woman was a little round fat creature with a perpetual smile, pretty teeth, and dressed in grey. They were talking in low tones, but I heard what they said. Baby language was evidently their strong point. He turned his head towards her with the most languishing lover-like look I ever saw. ‘Plumpety itty partidge, who does ‘oo love?’ he asked. ‘Zoo!’ answered the little woman with a smile that went all round her head like the equator on a globe.”
Mamie laughed as he finished the story.
“That represented their idea of conversation, what you call ‘dear ways.’ My dear ways are not much like that and yours are quite different. When I ask you if you love me, you almost always give the same answer. But then, I know you mean it dear, do you not?”
“There it is again!” George laughed. “Of course I do—only, as you say, my imagination is limited. I cannot find new ways of saying it. But then, you do not vary the question either, so that it is no wonder if my answers are a little monotonous, is it?”