"You do not say a word," he complained, when he had kissed her and kissed her--on the cheeks, the chin, the eyes, and the mouth--when he had held her so close to him that she felt deliciously dishevelled, and for some seconds found it difficult to breathe. "Not a word!"
She gasped, and kept him away with one hand. He was holding the other so tightly by now that she had no chance of recovering it.
"Any word--the word that is in your heart." There was no use talking loud. His arm was about her again.
"There is no word in my heart--you have squeezed it out," she managed to say.
"You would not let me lay a finger on you if you did not love me--I know that," said he.
"You know that, and yet you ask me to say something to you. Talking is a sinful waste of time."
"So it is, my darling girl. You have said it: out of the fulness of the heart the mouth----"
"Kisses--that is what it does; it doesn't speak--it cannot."
"Since when has that knowledge come to you, Priscilla."
"I confess that it is newly acquired. You make an excellent coach for a backward girl, my master."
"You are not backward; it is only that your education has been neglected."
"And you look on yourself as a successful crammer? Haven't you seen the advertisements, 'particular attention paid to neglected children'? You are paying me particular attention. Don't you think that my education is pretty nearly complete, Jack?"
"Oh, you have a lot to learn yet; but you are coming on. You have learned that my name is Jack--that's a distinct advance. Oh, my dear girl, the delight of teaching you all--all--all!"
"I had no idea that you were so ardent an educationist. Ah, I knew you would come to me! But what I have been asking myself for several days is, Were there no girls in your own station in life----"
She could not finish her question for laughter; the phrase which her father was very fond of using sounded very funny coming from her lips, which were--as she had found out--exactly on a level with his own.
"Station of life? Station of life? Your lips are the waiting room--a first-class waiting room in the station of life," said he.
That was how he received her suggestion that he was ready to make what his relations would undoubtedly call a _mesalliance_ in asking her to be his wife; though, as a matter of fact, he had not yet asked her to be his wife. Perhaps she should have regarded his movements during the previous five minutes merely in the light of a friendly attention to enable him to see if she was amicably disposed toward him.