"Why don't I?" he exclaimed.
"Because I'm not pirty. I'm not young. I'm not round or tall. I haven't got nice clothes or those terrible manners that men like in women. You're tired of me. I don't blame you; but you don't have to kiss me, and you don't want to."
It was a silly sort of contest for so old a couple; but their souls felt as young as childhood, or younger, and this debate was all-important. He caught at her again and tried to drag her head to his lips, pleading inanely:
"Of course I want to kiss you, honey! Of course I do! Please—please don't be this way!"
But she evaded him still, and glared at him as from a great distance, sneering rather at herself than him and using that old byword of Luella's:
"What can you see in me?" Suddenly she challenged him: "Who do you kiss when you kiss me?"
He stared at her for a while as if he were not sure who she was. Then he sat down on the broad arm of her chair and took one of her hands in his—the hand with the wedding-ring on it—and seemed to talk to the hand more than to her, lifting the fingers one after another and studying each digit as though it had a separate personality—as perhaps it had.
XIV
"Who do I kiss when I kiss you? That's a funny question!"
He laughed solemnly. Then he made a very long speech, for him; and she listened to it with the attention due to that most fascinating of themes, the discussion of oneself by another.