"Well, then, if you love, do you love forever?"
The doctor laughed nervously and tightened his arms around the innocent.
"Nobody has lived forever yet—nobody knows!"
"But forever while you live—do you love as long as that?"
"You wouldn't know until you were dead and then it would be too late to report. But aren't you doing a good deal of hard fighting this morning,—on soft-boiled eggs,—though I think the victory is yours, General, the victory is truly and honestly yours!"
"I can't stop thinking, can I? You don't expect me to stop thinking, do you, when I'm just beginning really to think?"
"Very well, then, we won't say anything more about thinking."
"Then do you or don't you?"
"Now, what are you trying to talk about?" demanded the doctor angrily, and as if on instant guard. A new hatred seemed coming to life in him; there was a burning flash of it in his eyes.
"Just between ourselves—suppose that when I am a man and after I have been married to Elizabeth awhile, I get tired of her and want a little change. And I fell in love with another man's wife and dared not tell her, because if I did I might get a bullet through me; would I love the other man's wife more because I could not tell her, or would I love her more because I told her and risked the bullet?"