I
can give no other reason."
"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only
picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake,
spoil the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she
added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at
least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would
have loved me for ever and ever!"
"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is a
pleasant thought, and costs nothing."
She weighed that remark in silence a while. "Did you ever hear
anything of me from then till now?" she inquired.
"Not a word."
"So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as
you. I may tell you about it some day. But don't ever ask me to
do it, and particularly do not press me to tell you now."
Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender
acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were
stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of years;
made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious
melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could neither
be proved nor disproved.
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