'Good gracious, I must have been dreaming! Waiter!'
Osborne said to the waiter, 'Roast beef.'
'When the waiter has brought the beef are you likely to fall asleep again?'
'Yes, you did. But I don't mind what you say. I like to look at you when you talk that kind of rubbish. It's like seeing a panorama to music. You look at the panorama, and don't mind the music a bit.'
His eyes dwelt on her with a wistful sadness. She was looking like a woman whose heart would melt at the first touch of enthusiasm or love, and she was talking like a machine. How was this? What could it mean? What could cause the antagonism between the spirit in the eyes and the spirit in the words?
He shook his head sadly, and was silent awhile. She spoke again,--
'Two,' he answered wearily, keeping his glance on the cloth. He thought, 'How different they are from you! How shocked they would be to see any girl act and speak as you do! And yet--and yet I--I have asked this woman to be my wife, and in a month I shall know whether she will or not! They never could endure her. They would not walk with her, or sit with her. They would be horrified at every trait in her character. What am I doing? What have I done? Two days ago I told myself I did not want her or her love, and I have proposed to her to-day! What is the matter with me? I used to be a firm man; now I am as fickle as the wind. Perhaps she will refuse me after all. There is one thing certain, whether I marry her or not, I can never introduce her at home.'
He raised his face quickly. She was smiling gently, confidentially at him. This 1136 was a lover's joke, a lover's secret, the first of the kind he had ever had. What a warmth ran through all his nature, at the thought of having a secret with the owner of that soft figure, the owner of that beautiful face, and with the spirit of those dark eyes! They two, she and he, intimate already; bound round by a secret; separated from all the rest of the world by a trivial secret! They two in the innermost bowers of personality! What affluence and prodigality of happiness! What rich tumult! What bewildering joy!
'Ah,' he said, looking at her with eyes dancing with happiness, 'I must think of that sonnet.'
'But were you not thinking of it when I spoke?'