"Yes," said John, nothing daunted, "though unlike his, mine is an unreciprocated flame, and unavowed."
"Ah?" said Maria Dolores, reserved indeed, but not without an undertone of sympathy.
"Yes," said John, playing with fire, and finding therein a heady mixture of fearfulness and joy. "The woman I love doesn't dream I love her, and dreams still less of loving me,—for which blessed circumstance may Heaven make me truly thankful."
The sentiment sounding unlikely, Maria Dolores raised doubtful eyes. They shone into John's; his drank their light; and something violent happened in his bosom.
"Oh—?" she said.
"Yes," said he, thinking what adorable little hands she had, as they lay loosely clasped in her lap, thinking how warm they would be, and fragrant; thinking too what fun it was, this playing with fire, how perilous and exciting, and how egotistical he must seem to her, and how nothing on earth should prevent him from continuing the play. "Yes," he said, "it's a circumstance to be thankful for, because, like Winthorpe himself, though for different reasons, I'm unable to contemplate marriage." His voice sank sorrowfully, and he made a sorrowful movement.
"Oh—?" said Maria Dolores, her sympathy becoming more explicit.
"Winthorpe's too beastly puritanical—and I'm too beastly poor," said he.
"Oh," she murmured. Her eyes softened; her sympathy deepened to compassion.
"She must certainly put me down as the most complacent egotist in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."—"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' if I asked even a beggar-maid to marry me."