Then there was a long, uncomfortable pause, broken by saying: "Ah, well, there's time enough, only be sure that you know your heart, if you have any; have you?"
She laughed again her gay little laugh. "I'll tell him that if he ever comes."
He had a far-away look, and breathed long and deeply. Suddenly he spoke up.
"Dearest love," taking both her hands and looking with gravity into her face, "I did not mean to say it yet, but I must. I love you—I love you—and I would show it in a thousand ways. Be my wife."
She listened to each word intently, her face neither flushed nor paled. She spoke very deliberately: "I—your wife, Mr. Frost? No. You interest me, but if I care for you, there is something that mars its fullness. Forgive me for saying it plainly, but I do not love you."
"But, little woman, you cannot but awaken to it sometime. It is a heart of stone that will not warm to the touch of such love as mine. Love is dependent upon contact; we are only the wires through which the current throbs—lifeless before they are touched, and listless when sundered."
He attempted to take her in his arms, but she slipped from his embrace, and naively replied, "If
