Part 26 (1/2)
”Adsum.”
”I'm really serious.”
”I never was less so.”
”I should not have become your wife if I had dreamed you would be such a brute!”
”You'll please remember that I never asked you to marry me.”
She laughed deliciously over the insult, and after that I could not resist her.
”You have,” I said, ”a bundle in your left hand, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon, which you sedulously keep from my sight, but of which I caught a glimpse as you entered.”
”And you've known it all this time! Perhaps you know too what I want?”
”Last spring,” I answered, ”I knocked at the door of your morning-room twice, and receiving no response, I went in, to find you reading something that you instantly hid from sight. There were on the lounge, I remember, a sheet of tissue paper and a blue ribbon. I suspect a connection.”
”Well?”
”My theory is that you have some really improper book wrapped in the paper, and that is why you so guiltily hide it from me.”
”Oh, Donald, it gives me such happiness to read it!”
”That was the reason I asked you why you had tears in your eyes, when I surprised you that day. Your happiness was most enviable!”
”Men never understand women!”
”Deo gratias.”
”But I love it.”
”I don't like to hear you express such sentiments for so erotic a book.”
”Oh, don't apply such a word to it!” she cried, in a pained voice.
”A word,” I explained, ”taken from the Greek _erotikos_, which is derived from _erao_, meaning 'I love pa.s.sionately.' It is singularly descriptive, Maizie.”
”If it means that, I like it, but I thought you were insulting my book.”
”Almost five years ago,” I remarked, ”a volume was stolen from my room, which I have never since been able to recover. Now a woman of excessive honesty calmly calls it hers.”
”You know you don't want it.”
”I want it very much.”
”Really?”
”To put it in the fire.”
”Don!”