"A code, dear?"
"For your writing to me. You see Ross will have to read the letters, and how can you say in every other line you love me, with that duffer reading it out loud?"
"Oh, Karl—how stupid of me not to learn writing the other way! You see it never occurred to me I would be away from you. Couldn't I take that manual, and make it out from that?"
"Well—you might, but we'll do both; it will be fun to have a code. Now, when you say—'I am a trifle tired,' you mean—'Oh, sweetheart, I am so lonesome for you that I am never going away again!'"
"But won't Mr. Ross think it strange if I say in each letter that I am a trifle tired?"
"What do we care what he thinks? They're not his letters, are they? And when you say—'New York seems most attractive,'—you mean—'Oh, dearest, I never dreamed I loved you so much! I am finding out in a thousand new ways how much I care, and never, never, shall we be separated again.'"
"And when I say, 'I send you my love'—it will be perfectly proper for Mr. Ross to read that, I mean—'Dear love—I send you a thousand kisses, and I would give the world for one minute now in your arms.'"
And so they arranged it,—revising, enlarging, going over it a great many times to have it all certain—there was such a tender kind of fun in it. As to the other side of it, Karl of course could write to her on his typewriter.
It was a beautiful evening they had sitting there before the fire. She saw pictures for him, and he even saw some pictures for her,—he said a blind man could see certain pictures no one else could possibly see. They spoke of how they had never been separated since their marriage, of how strange it would seem to be apart, but always of how beautiful to be together again. There was such a sweetness, tenderness, in the sadness which hung about their parting. They made the most of their pain, as is the way of lovers, for it drew them together in a new way, and each kiss, each smallest caress, had a new and tender significance.
"You'll be back in time for your birthday, Ernestine?"