"And for the same reason I can never leave you so long as this gross
body is at my disposal. You are about to tell me that if I remain here I
shall probably be hanged on account of what happened yesterday. There are
grounds for my considering this outcome unlikely, but if I knew it to be
inevitable--if I had but one hour's start of Jack Ketch,--I swear to you I
would not budge."
"I am heartily sorry," she replied, "since if I had known you really cared
for me--so much--I would never have married you. Oh, it is impossible!" the
girl laughed, with a trace of worriment. "You had not laid eyes on me until
a week ago yesterday!"
"My dear," John Bulmer answered, "I am perhaps inadequately acquainted
with the etiquette of such matters, but I make bold to question if love is
exclusively regulated by clock-ticks. Observe!" he said, with a sort of
fury: "there is a mocking demon in me who twists my tongue into a jest even
when I am most serious. I love you: and I dare not tell you so without
a grin. Then when you laugh at me I, too, can laugh, and the whole
transaction can be regarded as a parody. Oh, I am indeed a coward!"
"You are nothing of the sort! You proved that yesterday."
"Yesterday I shot an unsuspecting man, and afterward fenced with
another--in a shirt of Milanese armor! Yes, I was astoundingly heroic
yesterday, for the simple reason that all the while I knew myself to be as
safe as though I were snug at home snoring under an eider-down quilt. Yet,
to do me justice, I am a shade less afraid of physical danger than of
ridicule."
She gave him a womanly answer. "You are not ridiculous, and to wear armor
was very sensible of you."
"To the contrary, I am extremely ridiculous. For observe: I am an elderly
man, quite old enough to be your father; I am fat--No, that is kind of you,
but I am not of pleasing portliness, I am just unpardonably fat; and, I
believe, I am not possessed of any fatal beauty of feature such as would
by ordinary impel young women to pursue me with unsolicited affection:
and being all this, I presume to love you. To me, at least, that appears
ridiculous."
"Ah, do not laugh!" she said. "Do not laugh, Monsieur Bulmer!"
But John Bulmer persisted in that curious laughter. "Because," he presently
stated, "the whole affair is so very diverting."
"Believe me," Claire began, "I am sorry that you care--so much. I--do not
understand. I am sorry,--I am not sorry," the girl said, in a new tone, and
you saw her transfigured; "I am glad! Do you comprehend?--I am glad!" And
then she swiftly closed the window.
John Bulmer observed. "I am perhaps subject to hallucinations, for
otherwise the fact had been previously noted by geographers that heaven is
immediately adjacent to Poictesme."