"Well, you are breaking mine," said Magnus; "so we're quits." "What have I done?" Cherry faltered. "Thrown me off like a bad package. You didn't look at me when I came in, you hardly spoke to me. I suppose I deserve it, but that does not generally make things much easier." "Just now you found fault with me for looking at you." "Found fault, did I?" said Magnus. "I wonder you dare say such a thing to me." "Well, remarked upon it, then," Cherry corrected herself. "A man is pretty apt to remark upon the first gleam of anything like sunlight he has seen for twelve hours." "Those twelve hours having come off chiefly in the night." "Stop chopping logic with me! If I get cross there is no telling what I may do. Cherry, why don't you say out all the dreadful things at once, and have them off your mind?" "But, I thought it was to cure my _head_ you brought me here?" "You did not think any such thing. You knew I had to have it out with you, some time, and now you will not let me do it. Never even gave me your hand when I came in, but just a little piece of ice." "You are quite wild this morning," Cherry said, with the feeling that detachments were coming up faster than she could manage them. "Men are apt to be, when they are waiting to be shot and the guns don't go off." "But how do I hinder your having a talk?" "It takes two to make a bargain, doesn't it? Oh, yes, I can talk on by myself, Saturdays and Sundays, and all the week, and tell the truth straight through. How lovely Cherry looks this morning! The first night I came back I found she had grown handsomer than I ever thought any woman could be, and I think so still. And there's not a girl in all the world that is half so good. And I never cared two straws for anybody else--and never shall. Never could, for that matter. And I've been a fool, and a poltroon, and anything else you like; and so she has thrown me off, and has no use for me any more. And it makes me just mad to sit here and think that I have lost her. And some day I shall get her wedding cards, with the name of some nice man who never tied his shoestrings in a hurry." "Magnus, why, Magnus!" Cherry said, astonishment sending every other feeling to the rear. "What is the matter with you?" "That." "What has come over you?" "This." "But we cannot have our talk on such terms," said Cherry, catching her breath a little. "They're the only terms we shall ever talk on again," said Magnus. "We always chose each other out, from the time we could walk; and I knew I loved you with all my heart when I went away. But the minute I saw you again, that first night, I knew that I never should--never could--love anybody else. Not if I lived to be nine hundred and ninety-nine, and you got in love with forty other men." Cherry could not help laughing, in spite of herself, for sheer nervousness. "I think that would cure you," she said. "No, it wouldn't. I ought to know, after fighting the thing through all night."