"Are you trying to make me jealous, you gypsy!" he laughed. But there was no answering laughter in her face.
"Yes, perhaps I am," she admitted, as if she were a little surprised that it was so. And in her next slowly worded sentence she discovered for herself another truth. "I mind it, Warren!" she said. "I wish, with all my heart, that it wasn't so!"
"That isn't very consistent, sweet. Your life made you what you were, the one woman in the world I could ever have loved. Why quarrel with the process?"
"I wish you cared!" she said wistfully.
"Cared?"
"Yes--suffered over it--objected. Then I could keep proving to you that I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until now!"
"But I believe that, my darling!"
She smiled at his wide, innocent look, a mother's amused yet hopeless smile, and as they rose from their late luncheon he put his arm about her and tipped her beautiful face up toward his own.
"Don't you realize, my darling, that just as you are, you are perfect to me--not nearly perfect, or ninety-nine per cent. perfect, but pressed down and running over, a thousand per cent., a million per cent.?" he asked.
Her dark beauty glowed; she was more lovely than ever in her exquisite content.