"
"I have laughed enough to-night. Tell me!"
"Tell you! Yes--that is easy to do. But it would be so hard to make you
understand! It is the difference between a word and a thought, between
belief and mere show, between truth and hearsay--more than that--much
more than I can tell you. It means so much to me--it may mean so little
to you, when I have said it!"
"But if you do not say it, how can I guess it, or try to understand it?"
"Would you try? Would you?"
"Yes."
Her voice was soft, gentle, persuasive. She felt something she had never
felt, and it must be love, she thought. She had always liked him a
little better than the rest. But surely, this was more than mere
liking. She had a strange longing to hear him say the words, to start,
as her instinct told her she must, when he spoke them, to be told for
the first time that she was loved. Is it strange, after all? Young,
imaginative and full of life, she had been brought up to believe that
she was to be married to some man she scarcely knew, after a week's
acquaintance, without so much as having talked five minutes with him
alone; she had been taught that love was a legend and matrimony a matter
of interest.
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