"Don't, Mark!" she pleaded, giving him a glimpse of wet blue eyes.
"I'm not teasing you, darling," he said tenderly. "I'm not going to tease you! But you do love me, Julia?"
A silence, but she tightened the hold of the little glove that rested on his free hand.
"Don't you, Julie?" he begged.
"Why—you know I do, Mark!" the girl said, and both began to laugh.
"But then what's the matter?" Mark asked, serious again.
"Well—" Julia looked all about her, and finally brought her troubled eyes to rest on his.
"Well, what, you darling?"
"Well, it's just this, Mark. I don't know whether I can get it over to you." The girl interrupted herself for a little puzzled laugh. "I don't know that I can get it over to myself," she said. "But it's this: I feel as if I didn't know myself yet, d'ye see? I don't know what I want, myself, and of course I don't know what I want my husband to be like—d'ye see, Mark? I—I feel as if I didn't know anything—I don't know what's good and what's just common. I haven't read books, I haven't had any one to tell me things, and show me things!" She turned to him eyes that he was amazed to see were brimming again. "My mother never told me about things," she burst out incoherently, "about how to talk, and taking baths—and not using cologne!"
Mark could not quite follow this argument, but he was quick with soothing generalities.