She actually gasped. She rose, and stood staring toward the door, a deep frown on her face; she shrugged her shoulders; she clinched her fists; she rapped the ground sharply with her foot; then she slowly bent down over him, resting her thin left hand on his broad shoulder while she peered with a stare of would-be incredulity into his enraptured face.
"Look at me, Alfred!" she cried, in a rasping tone. "_You know you don't mean one single word of all you've just said!_"
"Why, I do," he insisted, blandly. "As God is my judge, I do. There ain't no such thing as _two_ loves--a first and a second. When the real thing comes to a body he knows it. A feller could be blinded for a time, I reckon, in hot-blooded youth, while he was in close pursuit of a thing that kept slipping away from him, as was my case when Dick and me was going nip and tuck to see which could get ahead; but the genuine, real thing is as different as--as day from night."
She drew herself up straight, and heaved a deep, lingering sigh. "I don't believe you mean a word of what you say," she repeated. "It ain't natural for a man who is as jealous as--as you always have been even--even of the dead--to set up and talk that way."
"Jealous?" he said, half musingly. "I don't think I'm a jealous man. Anyways, I don't think a feller would have the right to be jealous of a man that was dead and under ground. As I look at it now, I don't think a man has a right, in the best sense, to marry a widow; and in the same way a widower has no right to lay aside his past memories if they are the right sort. They ought to be his best company in his loneliness. Of course, now that you and me are linked together by law and religion, we owe it to the community we live in to do our duty and make the best--I mean, to live along as friendly and harmoniously as we can."
She sank down to the seat again, and sat staring at him fixedly. Presently, seeing that he was not going to resume speaking, she said: "I believe, on my soul, Alfred, you have plumb lost your senses. I may or may not be responsible for it; you may have let all this talk about Dick and my--my thinking about him prey on your mind till it is unhinged. Why, what I done about his grave and memory wasn't anything but respect that was due to him, and has nothing to do with our agreement. You've hurt my feelings, Alfred--you actually have."