“But how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?”
“Can you ask Miss Everdene—knowing as you do—what my offence is based on?”
“If you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I don’t mind doing it,” she uncertainly and doubtingly answered. “But you can’t really care for a word from me? you only say so—I think you only say so.”
“That’s unjust—but I won’t repeat the remark. I am too gratified to get such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone. I do, Miss Everdene, care for it. You may think a man foolish to want a mere word—just a good morning. Perhaps he is—I don’t know. But you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman yourself.”
“Well.”
“Then you know nothing of what such an experience is like—and Heaven forbid that you ever should!”
“Nonsense, flatterer! What is it like? I am interested in knowing.”
“Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without torture.”
“Ah, sergeant, it won’t do—you are pretending!” she said, shaking her head. “Your words are too dashing to be true.”
“I am not, upon the honour of a soldier.”