Hilary's eyes went wide: "That's wonderful, old man! But I don't believe she likes a soldier of any sort. If I were a woman I'd be doggoned if I'd ever marry a soldier!"
"Yet the man who gets her," said Greenleaf, "ought to be a soldier in every drop of his blood. You don't know her yet; but you soon will, and I'm glad."
"Now, why so? I can't ever please her enough to be pleased with her. I'm too confounded frivolous! I love nonsense, doggon it, for its own sake! I love to get out under a sky like this and just reel and whoop in the pure joy of standing on a world that's whirling round!"
"But you do please her. She's told me so."
"Don't you believe her! I don't. I can't. I tell you, Fred, I could never trust a girl that forever looks so trustworthy! S'pose I should fall in love with her! Would you--begrudge her to me?"
"I bequeath her to you."
"Ah! you know I haven't the ghost of a chance! She's not for po' little Hil'ry. I never did like small women, anyhow!"
"My boy! If ever you like this one she'll no more seem small than the open sea."
"I suppose," mused Hilary, "that's what makes it all the harder to let go. If a girl has a soul so petty that she can sit and hear you through to the last word your heart can bleed, you can turn away from her with some comfort of resentment, as if you still had a remnant of your own stature."
"Precisely!" said the lover. "But when she's too large-hearted to let you speak, and yet answers your unspoken word, once for all, with a compassion so modest that it seems as if it were you having compassion on her, she's harder to give up than--"