Lovers are divided into two kinds, the babbling and the silent.
We meet specimens of the silent kind on a Thames back-water--the punt
drawn up under the shady bank with the twain lying side by side, their
arms about each other all the afternoon. When evening comes, and it is
time to return home, her fellow gets out the sculls, and they part
saying: "Well, dear, next Sunday, at the same time." "Yes, at the same
time next Sunday."
We were of the babbling kind, as the small part of our conversation
that appears in this story shows.
"My dear, my dear, remember that we are in an open carriage."
"What do those folks matter to us?"
"My dear, if I don't like it?"
To justify my desire of her lips I began to compare her beauty with
that of a Greek head on a vase, saying that hers was a cameo-like
beauty, as dainty as any Tanagra figure.
"And to see you and not to claim you, not to hold your face in my
hands just as one holds a vase, is----"
"Is what?"
"A kind of misery. What else shall I say? Fancy my disappointment if,
on digging among these mountains, I were to find a beautiful vase, and
some one were to say: 'You can look at it but not touch it.'"
"Do you love me as well as that?" she answered, somewhat moved, for my
words expressed a genuine emotion.
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