"Yes! I wish you'd turn in once in a while and call me an old brute, and say you wished you'd never seen me, and didn't know how in heaven's name you were going to go on living with me!"
"Karl," she gasped—"are you going crazy?"
"No—at least I hope not. But you're just nice to me all the time, because—because I'm blind! I don't like it! I wish you'd swear at me sometimes!"
"Well, in the first place," laughing, but serious too,—it had come so heatedly, "it isn't my way to swear at any one. I never did swear at you. Why should I begin now?"
"Oh, swear was figurative language," he laughed.
"And of all things for a man to harrow up his soul about! Not liking it because his wife is never horrid to him!"
"It's not as crazy as it sounds. Are you and I a couple of plaster saints? Well, hardly! Then why don't we have any quarrels? It's just because you're sorry for me! I'll not have you being sorry for me!" he concluded, almost angrily.
But when she kissed him, he could not resist a smile. "You don't know much, do you, Karl? Don't you know that we don't quarrel about little things, because we've had so many big things on hand? We don't swear at each other, because—"
"Because we have so many other things to swear at," he finished for her.
"That's it. All our fighting emotion is being used up."