"You say that you told Maude that you loved her to distraction. To which declaration she replied, 'So do I.' Where there is in that any avowal that she loves you I fail to see. She simply stated that she too loved herself to distraction, and I breathe again."
"Hair-splitting!" said I, wrathfully.
"No—side-splitting!" returned Harry, with a roar of laughter. "Now my declaration was very different from yours. It was made when Maude and I were walking home from church. It was about nine o'clock, and the streets were bathed in mellow moonlight. I declared myself because I could not help myself. I had no intention of doing so when I started out earlier in the evening, but the uplifting effect of the service of song at church, combined with the most romantic kind of a moon, forced me into it. I told her I was a struggler; that I was not yet able to support a wife; and that while I did not wish to ask any pledge from her, I could not resist telling her that I loved her with all my heart and soul."
I began to feel blue. "And what did she say?" I asked, a little hoarsely.
"She said she returned my affection."
I braced up. "Ha, ha, ha!" I laughed. "This time the joke is on you."
"I fail to see it," he said.
"Of course," I retorted. "It is not one of your jokes. But say, Harry, when you send a poem to a magazine and the editor doesn't want it, what does he do with it?"
"Returns it. Ah!"
The "ah" was a gasp.