“I am,” he said nodding. “You’ve made up your mind to fool me, that’s all. I don’t feel married to you in the least, and that’s the truth. Shouldn’t be surprised to wake up any day, young lady, and find you’ve disappeared—swum out to sea or taken to the woods.”
“I believe you’re half serious?” she said with a smile.
“I am—Pagan!”
“Well, don’t you like my way the best?” she said, looking down at him, thoroughly delighted.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On the end,” he said abruptly.
This answer brought a swift change in mood to her. The archness fled from her smile, and her eyes grew pensive and far-seeing.
“Isn’t it enough to be as happy as we are to-day?” she said, with a touch of sadness.
“I suppose so,” he said, with an uncontrollable burst of jealousy; “particularly when you can’t know what’s in the future or in the past.” He rose up quickly and caught her in her arms with a wild revolt against the measure of herself she allotted him, crying roughly: “Inga, you love one way, I another, and sometimes it drives me mad to think of what’s passed. I love you as a man loves; I want you all, completely, to know everything you have done, everything that’s behind your eyes now, everything you’re thinking.”