I never
knew what love could mean until lately."
His grasp hurt her knuckles. "Yes, dear, I have seen. It's very sweet. It's
the mother in you, Bibi, and my helplessness. Of course! What could a woman
_love_ in a dependent, half-corpse of a no-man?"
For a moment she was too surprised to speak. She stared at him. "What a
notion! and it isn't true! You never were any more a man than you've been
through these two dreadful years." She sounded fairly indignant. "And for
my part, I never appreciated what you were half as much."
"Love doesn't begin with a _P_," he remarked to the opposite wall.
"But what do you suppose the _purpose_ was?"
"Love?"
"More. _You_."
"You never told me." That strange voice and averted face!
"How should I fancy you wouldn't know? I had never thought it out myself
until just now. It has simply been going on from day to day, as natural and
quiet as growing--" A bewildering illumination was spreading in her mind.
"Look here, young man"--she forced his face around to see it,--"what
goblins have you been hatching in the night-watches?" The raillery broke.
"Dear, is that what has been troubling you? Is there anything else?"
He looked at her now.
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