"Don't it scare you to say it?" she demanded.
"Yes, sir, it does," he confessed. "It's like sayin' your own name over the telephone. What about you? Will you always, too?"
"Yes," she said, "always. Only—"
"Only what?" he repeated anxiously.
"Oh," she said, "don't let's let any outside things come between us, Allen—like they do, like with Bess and Opie,—business and sewin',—that's what I'm afraid of," she ended vaguely.
"Well," he said, "I guess we ain't much afraid of each other, honey. I guess we're just afraid of what could come between us."
A voice, unconvincing, unimportant, a part of the inessential aspect of alien things, detached itself from the accompaniment in the next room, saying something responsible and plaintive about only an hour till train time.
"An hour," Allen said over, and put his arms about her, with boyish awkwardness for the sake of the crisp muslin gown that had so terrified him. She rose and stood beside him, and he waited for a moment looking up in her face. "Chris," he said, "I'm scared of this one hour even. Till train time."
"I'll hurry up and get the hour done as quick as I can," she promised him gayly.
"Honestly, now—" said Chris's mother from the vague and indeterminate region where she moved.