“Why, if ’twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too.”
“How can you speak so lightly of such matters?”
“What matters?”
“Love, of course.”
“Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I speaking lightly,—the love you say you feigned for me, or the love you say you thought you had awakened in me?”
“The love I vow I do not feign for you! The love I wish I could awaken in you!”
“Why, captain, what a change has come over you!”
“Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!”
She smiled, as with amusement. “A somewhat speedy taking on, I should say.”