“By Jove, Helen! you’ve got on with your logic. I feel quite flattered! So far as I am aware you have had no tutor in that branch but myself! You’ll soon be too much for your master, by Jove!”
Like the pied piper, Helen smiled a little smile. But she said seriously,
“Well, George, all I have to suggest is—What if, after all your inability to believe it, things should at last prove, even to your—satisfaction, shall I say?—that there IS a God?”
“Don’t trouble yourself a bit about it, Helen,” returned George, whose mind was full of something else, to introduce which he was anxiously, and heedlessly, clearing the way: “I am prepared to take my chance, and all I care about is whether you will take your chance with me. Helen, I love you with my whole soul.”
“Oh! you have a soul, then, George? I thought you hadn’t!”
“It IS a foolish form of speech, no doubt,” returned Bascombe, a little disconcerted, as was natural. “—But to be serious, Helen, I do love you.”
“How long will you love me if I tell you I don’t love you?”
“Really, Helen, I don’t see how to answer such a question. I don’t understand you at all to-day! Have I offended you? I am very sorry if I have, but I am quite in the dark as to when or where or how.”
“Tell me then,” said Helen, heedless of his evident annoyance and discomfort, “how long will you love me if I love you in return?”
“For ever and ever.”