“Can’t you learn to call me Eddie?” he urged.
The girl was silent.
“You’re everything in the world to me, Rue.”
The same little mechanical smile fixed itself on her lips, and she looked straight ahead of her.
“Haven’t you begun to love me just a little bit, Rue?”
“I like you. You are very kind to us.”
“Don’t your affection seem to grow a little stronger now?” he urged.
“You are so kind to us,” she repeated gratefully; “I like you for it.”
The utterly unawakened youth of her had always alternately fascinated and troubled him. Gambler that he was, he had once understood that patience is a gambler’s only stock in trade. But now for the first time in his career he found himself without it.
“You said,” he insisted, “that you’d love me when we were married.”