“Valentine, what are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be here? And where have you been all this time? Why do you look so pale? Have you been drinking? Why did you get a shock?”
Valentine said violently: “I love you, Valerest.”
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy.
Valerest laid the tips of her fingers on his eyes, and she passed the tips of her fingers over his lips, and she said: “But I hate you!”
“You just wait!” said Valentine.
Valerest pulled at his ears with her fingers and defended her attitude with irresistible logic. She cried: “I don’t want to love anyone! I don’t want to love anyone! I don’t want to love anyone! I want to be free!” And she bit his ear.
Now there are writers who would think nothing of ending this chapter with a row of dots, viz: ... The author of this work, however, while yielding to no one in his admiration of a dexterous use of dots, cannot but think that the increasing use of dots to express the possibilities of love has become a public nuisance, and that the practice should be discouraged by literary-subscribers as dishonest, since what it really comes to is selling a dud to readers just when they are expecting something to happen. There are undoubtedly occasions, as when a writer is plumbing the bestial abysses of illicit love, when a judicious sprinkling of dots must be held to be proper, in the interests of decency and restraint. Yet even then it is to be deplored that the exploitation of dots so readily lends itself to the artfulness of suggestion. And the author of this work, which is written throughout under the government of marital virtue, cannot think that it is his part to hold his pen while he asks himself whether he shall dot or not dot. Has mankind, he asks himself, lived through all these æons of time only to find now that it cannot serve the decencies without the artificial aid of dots? Must, then, our dumb friends be neglected, while we needs must resort to these bloodless dots? For dogs are infinitely superior to dots as a means of describing the indescribable. The writer is, of course, referring particularly to Mr. Tuppy. Poor Mr. Tuppy.
“Yap!” said Mr. Tuppy. “Yap, yap, yap, yap!”
“What are you doing to Mr. Tuppy?” cried Valerest.
“Nothing,” said Valentine. “Only putting him out of the room.”