“Why did you not tell me when I asked you?”

“I might have said something foolish, I was angry then.”

“That was just the time to tell me.”

“And why so?

“What you think, then, is that I never can help you in anything?”

“What I think?” said he, throwing down his pen. “I think that without you I could not live. In all things, in all, not only are you a help to me, but it is by you that everything is done. You are literally to me ‘well-fallen,’” he went on smiling. “It is in you alone that I live; it seems to me nothing is good but because you are there, because you must....”

“Yes, I know it, I am a nice little child who has to be petted and kept quiet,” said I, in such a tone that he looked at me in amazement. “But I do not want this quieting; I have had enough of it!”

“Come, let me tell you about this morning’s trouble,” he said hastily, as if he was afraid to give me time to say more: “let us see what you think of it!”

“I do not wish to hear it now,” I replied.

I really did want to hear it, but it was more agreeable to me, at this moment, to disturb his tranquillity.