"Besides," she added as an afterthought, "I'm so young, and so are you."
"Oh, Damaris! Surely you don't want to wait until you find someone who's had lots of experience, which only means that he hasn't been playing the game as far as his future wife is concerned and will come to you like a ready-made suit returned from the cleaner's. The Kelhams always marry young, and our brides are always very young. That's why, I think, we're so strong and long-lived." He veered suddenly from the mazy subject of eugenics and pleaded hard, persuasively, stubbornly.
But Damaris, just as stubbornly, shook her head.
"Besides, Ben, this is unexpected. I haven't seen anything of you since I have been out; surely, if you love me so, you would have come over more often to—to—prepare the way."
She unashamedly exposed her hurt, whilst the man inwardly called himself every kind of a fool for having listened to another's voice upon a subject as vital and tricky as love.
Still he urged and pleaded, being of those who, refusing to take No as an answer, usually succeed in attaining their desire.
A wearisome process, but well worth while once in a lifetime, whatever kind of a clutter those first cousins, obstinacy, stubbornness and strong will cause you to accumulate about your feet at other times.
"I don't know enough to marry," persisted the girl. "I want to know what love really is, first."
"Oh! but, dear, I can teach you all you want to know," replied the man, in the customary all-sweeping manner of the male.
"But I want to know all about the different kinds."