“Perhaps a month or six weeks. Could you 160pull through the winter on eggs and dried apples–and candles?”
“If necessary.”
He laughed. “I believe you could! You are an angel, a Spartan, and a sport. Your nature is simply an extravagant profusion of the highest human attributes. And the worst of it is, you look it. You are too beautiful–in a superior, overtopping way. You scare me.”
She pushed back her chair. “You have said all that before.”
“You remember the frog who was in love with the moon?”
She regarded him from the corners of her eyes, but made no reply.
“He used to sit in his puddle and adore her. One pleasant evening she came down out of the sky and kissed him.”
“That was very good of her. And then what happened?”
“It killed him.”
Elinor pushed back her chair, arose from the table and stood beside him. “Do you think it was a happy death?”