“I have always loved you. I long to help and comfort you, to make you happy. Do you think that impossible?”
“Why ask inconvenient questions?”
“Is it inconvenient? My dearest, I did not mean it.”
“Because she cares for me she was afraid happiness was never coming,” he thought.
A man always attributes a woman’s refusing to tell him how much she cares to her being too shy to talk of it; never to her not caring enough. “Yet does she care?” he wondered. That he might still doubt, and not be obliged to think of settlements and the wedding ring was satisfactory, it left an element of uncertainty in their relations; he could dare to be tender, yet not too loving. Men marry because there is nothing else to do, he thought. They know all about their future wives, their affection is returned, it is satiating—there is nothing new.
Ten minutes afterwards Launa was singing Darkey songs for him, and laughing as if her quest for happiness were over—successfully.
As he bade her good-bye, she gave him her hand.
“Is that all?”
“Yes; all. Next time I shall not shake hands, between friends it is unnecessary.”
“I can wait.”