The Continental Dragoon Part 22

"The love I vow I do _not_ feign for you! The love I wish I _could_ awaken in you!"

"Why, captain, what a change has come over you!"

"Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!"

She smiled, as with amus.e.m.e.nt. "A somewhat speedy taking on, I should say."

"Love's born of a glance, _I_ say!"

"Haven't I heard that before?" reflectively.

"Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it, and now I say it again when I do!"

"And of what particular glance am I to suppose--"

"Of the first glance I cast on you when you entered this room in that gown. Yes, born of a glance--"

"Born of a gown, in that case, don't you mean?" derisively.

"Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish."

"I don't wish it should be born at all."

"You don't wish I should love you?"

"I don't wish you should love me or shouldn't love me. I don't wish you--anything. Why should I wish anything of one who is nothing to me?"

"Nothing to you! I would you were to me what I am to you!"

"What is that, pray?"

"An adorer!"

"You are a--very amusing gentleman."

"You refuse me a glimpse of hope?"

"You would like to have it as a trophy, I suppose. You men treasure the memories of your little conquests over foolish women, as an Indian treasures the scalps he takes."

"Lord! which s.e.x, I wonder, has the busier scalping-knife?"

"I can't speak for all my s.e.x. Some of us seek no scalps--"

"You don't have to. I make you a present of mine. I fling it at your feet."

"We seek no scalps, I say,--because we don't value them a finger-snap."

And she gave a specimen of the kind of finger-snap she did not value them at.

"In heaven's name," he said, "say what you do value, that I may strive to become like it! What do you value, I implore you, tell me?"

"Oh,--my studies, for one thing,--my French and my music,--"

"Could I but translate myself into French, or set myself to an air!"

"Nay, I don't care for _comic_ songs!"

"I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be buried in your garden, and grow up in the shape of a rose-bush--"

"Or a cabbage!"

"I fear you don't like that flower."

"Better come up in the form of your own Virginia tobacco."

"And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you don't like tobacco. Ah, Miss Philipse, this levity is far from the mood of my heart!"

"Why do you indulge in it, then?"

"I? Is it I who indulge in levity?"

"a.s.suredly, _I_ do not!" Oh, woman's privilege of saying unabashedly the thing which is not!

"No," said he, "for there's no levity in the coldness with which beauty views the wounds it makes."

"I'm sure one is not compelled to offer oneself to its wounds."

"No,--nor the moth to seek the flame."

"La, now you are a moth,--a moment ago, a rose-bush,--"

"And you are ten million roses, grown in the garden of heaven, and fas.h.i.+oned into one body there, by some celestial Praxiteles!"

"Dear me, am I all that?"

"Ay," he said, sadly, "and no more truly conscious of what it means to be all that, than any rose in any garden is conscious of what its beauty means!"

"Perhaps," she said, softly, feeling for a moment almost tenderness enough to abandon her purpose, "more conscious than you think!"

"Ah! Then you are not like common beauties,--as poor and dull within as they are rich and radiant without? You but pretend insensibility, to hide real feeling."

"I did not say so," she answered, lightly, bracing herself again to her resolution.

"But it is so, is it not?" he went on. "Your heart and mind are as roseate and delicate as your face? You can understand my praises and my feelings? You can value such love as mine aright, and know 'tis worthy some repayment?"

But she was not again to be duped by low-spoken, fervid words, or by wistful, glowing eyes. She must be sure of him.

"I know,--I recall now," she said, with little apparent interest; "you spoke of love a week ago, with no less eloquence and ardor."