“No, Donald,” she begged. “I want the whole story, to match the rest.”
“Five years ago I knew the saddest and most dejected of fellows, whose misery was so great that he wailed it out on paper. But now I know only the happiest of mortals, and he cannot write in the lugubrious tone of yore—unless a lady of his acquaintance will banish him from her presence or do something else equally joy-destroying.”
“Are you trying to bribe me into giving you a rest from my presence for a time?”
“Undoubtedly,” I assented. “It’s a fearful strain to live up to you, and it is beginning to tell on me.”
“If I didn’t know you were teasing, I should really be hurt. But I should like to ask you one thing.”
“And that is?”
“In your journal—well—of course I know that you were—that I am not—that your love made you think me what I never was in the least, Donald,” she faltered, “but still, perhaps—Do you remember what Mr. Blodgett said about his not giving Mrs. Blodgett for ten of the women he—? I hope you like my reality as much as your ideal.”
“Haven’t you changed your idea of me, Maizie?”
“Oh yes.”
“And therefore you don’t love me as much?”