"Do you mean to say that _you_ thought of coming too ?" I look up in surprise.
"Do not wives generally go with their husbands ?" "But would you _like_ to come ?" he asks, seizing my hands, and pressing them with such unconscious eagerness, that my wedding-ring makes a red print in its neighbor-finger.
O friends, I wish to Heaven that I had told a lie! It would have been, I am sure, one of the cases in which a lie would have been justifiable--nay, praiseworthy, too.

But, standing there, under the truth of his eyes, I have to be true, too.
"Like!" say I, evasively, casting down my eyes, and fiddling uneasily with one of the buttons of his coat, "it is hardly a question of '_like_,' is it?
I do not imagine that you _like_ it much yourself ?--one cannot always be thinking of what one likes." The pressure of his fingers on mine slackens; and, though, thanks to my wedding-ring, it was painful, I am sorry.

After a minute: "But you have not," say I, trying to speak in a tone of light and airy cheerfulness, "answered my question yet--how soon we must set off?
You know what a woman always thinks of first--her _clothes_, and I must be seeing to my packing." "The sooner the better," he answers, with a preoccupied look.

"Not later than ten days hence!" "_Ten days!_" Again my jaw falls.

He has altogether loosed my hands now, and resumed his walk.