"Oh, no," she said simply. "I only mean that when I am married I shall be married in that church."
"Why, pray?"
"My mother was married there," she said gently, and a look of moonbeams came into her eyes.
"Oh! That makes it seem more reasonable. But aren't you taking a good deal for granted in assuming that you are going to be married? Maybe you will grow up to be a nice little old maid, with a tabby cat and a teapot. What then?"
She did not answer my foolish gibe for a minute, and I feared I had offended her. But after a moment she said, with that quaint seriousness of hers:
"Do you know, that is a very hard question to decide. I have thought about it so often. It would be very splendid, of course, to fall in love with some great hero, and go through all sorts of awful tragedies, and then have it come out happily in the end, and of course one would have to be married if it came out happily, though it is kind of hard to think of what could happen next that would be interesting enough to make a proper climax, don't you think so? Just to live happy ever after seems sort of tame. So I have wondered whether, on the whole, it would not be more romantic to cherish a secret passion and grow old like withered rose leaves and have faded letters tied with a worn ribbon to be found in your desk when you were dead."
I considered the situation with proper seriousness. "Who would write the letters?" I asked.
"Oh,--"
"Some young man who was desperately in love with you, of course?"
"Why, yes," she admitted.