Then there was an interval. There were a good many intervals before I'd finished my remarks. Nothing like an interruption now and then to give you what I call zest.
She listened with the prettiest interest. Just as she'd have listened if I'd recited one of Euclid's propositions. She cared nothing for my story. All she wanted was to know, and to feel, that I was there. The consciousness that her evil dreams had vanished was sufficient. When she pressed herself against me, and felt how my heart kept time with hers, and how her tremors set me trembling, that was all the explanation she required. A woman's love has nothing to equal it in its power of forgetting. If she loves you you needn't ask her to forgive you; she forgets that she has anything to forgive.
We had tea, and Pollie and Jimmy and I made toast, and she superintended the proceedings. She considered that we weren't so good at it as we ought to have been; so she showed us how to improve. When I said that the chief thing she'd toasted was her cheeks, she whispered that I wasn't to say such things; so I kissed them instead. Whereupon she asserted that that piece of toast was spoilt; but we ate it all the same. And I declared, as I was eating it, that I could detect, from the taste, the exact spot on which she was engaged when the accident occurred. Which statement she positively asserted that she didn't believe.
I dare say it's a funny thing to be in love with your wife. I don't know. It's not too common a form of humour. And perhaps I'm not a judge of what is comical. But I'm glad that I'm in love with mine. I'm glad that she's my sweetheart--although she is my wife. The exigencies of a life which is not entirely commonplace prevent my devoting so much time as I could wish to my domestic duties, but this I may safely say, that however far away from each other we may be, the consciousness that my wife is my wife is ever with me; and the knowledge fills me with that complete content which makes me equal to any fortune.
After tea we had a romp with the children. I helped to bathe and put them to bed. And when they'd gone, and we'd told each other love tales by the fire, we, too, went up to rest. On the way we went into the youngsters' room, and stood side by side, looking down upon them as they slept.
'Don't you think,' asked Mary, 'that Pollie's pretty?'
'Well,' I said,' she's a little bit like you.'
She pressed my arm.
'Jimmy's just your image.'
'Poor lad!'