I would stake my soul on the certainty of being able to make you love me." His confidence in the power of his own passion was as strong as a boy's of twenty.
"If I were in love!" Elfrida repeated slowly, with an absent smile.

"And you think it would come afterward.
That is an exploded idea, my friend.

I should feel as if I were acting out an old-fashioned novel--an old-fashioned _second-rate_ novel." She looked at him with eyes that invited him to share their laughter, but the smile he gave her was pitiful, if she could have known it.

The strain she had bee putting upon him, and promised indefinitely to put upon him, was growing greater than he could bear.
"I am afraid I most ask you to decide," he said.

"You have been telling me two things, dear.