She looked at him with a quick inquiry in her clear eyes, as if to discover whether or not he was jesting. Something in his bold yet tender gaze parried her glance and her lids dropped. She drooped her head and shoulders a little, too, as if under some suddenly imposed burden.
"Aren't you very happy here?" he went on, leaning a little toward her. "I want you to be very happy."
"Oh, yes, I'm always happy. I never was unhappy in my life," she answered with a show of vehemence, instead of the careless lightness that she intended should appear. "I'm never serious enough to become sad."
Moreton looked at her with tender fervor, the power of love full upon him, and yet the silly rhyme kept ringing in his brain:
"The light of her eyes,
And the dew of her lips,
Where the moth never flies
And the bee never sips."
Truly love-making has all of human nature in it, from the grandeur of extreme exaltation down to the mere piping of sheerest nonsense; but the nonsense for the time, is just as sweet as any part, so much does it borrow of the rapture of the occasion. There is comedy of a slender sort in it, which it seems a sacrilege to separate from the sacred part, and yet we all are tempted into poking quiet fun at the big, strong men who awkwardly dabble in love's sweet stream. So few of them can come boldly down to the current and at once arrest it and have their will of it outright.
"What would you do if you were poor, like Miss Crabb, and had to face the world and struggle for life?" he asked with an absurd inconsequence in his manner and voice.
"I can't imagine such a thing," she quickly answered, "I really can't. It would be very, very hard, no doubt. But I sometimes think I might be of more use, that my life is quite empty of real value. I shouldn't know how to do any useful thing."
"You might make some one happy. That would be good."
"I have no knack; I am selfish, frivolous, intent upon my own happiness," she said, looking up with a bright smile.