She put out her hands as if to ward off a tangible blow. “Don’t,” she said weakly, “please don’t!”
“Don’t?” he repeated. “Does it hurt to speak of it? Do you want to forget it? Do you think I ever shall? I don’t want to. It’s all I shall have to remind me that once you had a heart!”
“No! no!” she cried vehemently. “You _must_ understand me better than that! Don’t you see that I want to do what you say? Don’t you see that my only way is to fight it? It is I who am weak! Oh, it seems in the past month I have learned so much! I am too wise!”
“Wait,” he said; “can you say truly in your heart that you do not love me?”
“It is!” he flamed. “Tell me you don’t love me and I will go away.”
She was silent, twisting up her fingers with a still intensity.
“But there’s so much in loving. It has so many parts. We love so many ways. We have more of us than our bodies. We have souls.”
“I’m not a disembodied spirit,” he broke in. “I don’t love you with any sub-conscious essence. I don’t believe in any isms. I love you with every fibre of my body--with every beat of my heart--with every nerve and with every thought of my brain! I love you as every other man in all the world loves every other woman in the world. I’m human; and I’m wise enough to know that God made us human with a purpose. He knows better than all the priests in the world. How do you _want_ to be loved? I tell you I love you with all--_all_--body and mind and soul! Now do you understand?”
“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s how I love you. Oh, no; I don’t mean that!”
“I don’t care how you love me!” he retorted. “I’ll take care of that! You loved me enough that once.”
“Ah, that’s just it! I forgot everything. I forgot myself and you! I wanted the touch of your hands--of your face! There was nothing else in the whole world! Oh!” she gasped, “do you think I thought of my soul then?”
“Listen!” he said, coming toward her so that she could feel his hot breaths. “You’re morbid. You’re unstrung. You have an idea that one ought to love in some subtle, supernatural, heavenly way. That’s absurd. We are made with flesh-and-blood bodies. We have veins that run and nerves that feel. You are trying to forget that you have a heart. We are not intended to be spirits--not until after we die, at any rate.”