“Why not?” she persisted.
“In the first place, because they are not worth anything; and then you might get an impression that I really meant what I wrote, and that I am deeply in love with some one.”
“And you are not in love?” There was a challenge in her voice. The gray-haired man smiled at her girlish, artless curiosity.
“Certainly not!” the young man said decidedly.
“But were you in love when you wrote them?”
“I really don’t know,” he answered. “Perhaps I was.”
“Well, I am,” she said, looking at him steadily. And when his eyes had shown astonishment and had begun to shine with irrepressible hope, she continued: “Indeed I am,—with my own dearest husband, who is so good to me. Am I not, darling?” And she entwined her arms about the gray-haired man’s neck and kissed him on the lips twice. And the gray-haired man laughed and looked pleased.
The young man’s face was rigid and very pale. In the dusk they could not see that his lips were twitching. But she had grown strangely quiet.
A great stillness had fallen upon the world. The evening star was shining very brightly now, and in the east a little lone star was blinking tremulously.
Presently she said, “I am afraid,” and shivered.