"Excuse me for interrupting you so often. But,"--and I got up and went to the piano,--"but I thank Heaven that it has brought you and me together." She looked up at me and bowed her head with a little smile, as her hands still wandered over the keys. "Heaven has certainly been very good to us," said she. "How much longer are you going to play?" I asked. "I'm sure I don't know. As long as you like." "If you want to do as I like, you will stop immediately." She let her hands rest on the keys a moment, and gave me a rapid, questioning look. Whether she found a sufficient answer in my face I know not; but she slowly rose, and, with a very pretty affectation of obedience, began to close the instrument. I helped her to do so. "Perhaps you would like to be quite alone," she said. "I suppose your own room is too cold." "Yes," I answered, "you've hit it exactly. I wish to be alone. I wish to monopolize this cheerful blaze. Hadn't you better go into the kitchen and sit with the cook? It takes you women to make such cruel speeches." "When we women are cruel, Mr. Locksley, it is without knowing it. We are not wilfully so. When we learn that we have been unkind, we very humbly ask pardon, without even knowing what our crime has been." And she made me a very low curtsy. "I will tell you what your crime has been," said I. "Come and sit by the fire. It's rather a long story." "A long story? Then let me get my work." "Confound your work! Excuse me, but I mean it. I want you to listen to me. Believe me, you will need all your thoughts." She looked at me steadily a moment, and I returned her glance. During that moment I was reflecting whether I might silently emphasize my request by laying a lover's hand upon her shoulder. I decided that I might not. She walked over and quietly seated herself in a low chair by the fire. Here she patiently folded her arms. I sat down before her. "With you, Miss Blunt," said I, "one must be very explicit. You are not in the habit of taking things for granted. You have a great deal of imagination, but you rarely exercise it on the behalf of other people." I stopped a moment. "Is that my crime?" asked my companion. "It's not so much a crime as a vice," said I; "and perhaps not so much a vice as a virtue. Your crime is, that you are so stone-cold to a poor devil who loves you." She burst into a rather shrill laugh. I wonder whether she thought I meant Johnson. "Who are you speaking for, Mr. Locksley?" she asked. "Are there so many? For myself." "Honestly?" "Honestly doesn't begin to express it." "What is that French phrase that you are forever using? I think I may say, '_Allons, donc_!'" "Let us speak plain English, Miss Blunt." "'Stone-cold' is certainly very plain English. I don't see the relative importance of the two branches of your proposition. Which is the principal, and which the subordinate clause,--that I am stone-cold, as you call it, or that you love me, as you call it?"