“I did it in a dream—no, I don’t mean that—I mean this is a dream. I ought to explain.”
“No, don’t try. I understand,” said Miriam softly.
The girl’s head sank forward on his shoulder. She was crying a little, but she suffered her lover’s arms to slip around her waist, and into his trembling hand she pressed her own.
It was done, the impossible, the inconceivable! And even Amsden felt in his heaving heart that he had never done anything so easy and so utterly delightful in his whole life.
It was true that Miriam did not understand, but Amsden felt that at such a juncture any explanations would be not merely out of place, but even indelicate.
To his credit be it said, however, that on one occasion before his marriage he attempted to confess to Miriam all the circumstances of his proposal; but while he was still struggling with his introduction she stopped him with a peremptory gesture.
“I don’t understand a word about subjective and objective minds,” she said, in a wounded voice. “All I know is that you made me the most beautiful proposal I had ever heard—I mean imagined—but of course if you want to take it back by saying that you were not responsible at the time—”
Whereupon Amsden was obliged to consume two delightful hours in assuring his sweetheart that he was a blundering fool, and that his metaphysical nonsense, translated, meant that it was his best self that had made that eloquent proposal, and that he was only afraid his every-day self was not one tenth good enough for her.
