Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 169 by Various Authors
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s," he said. "If you had not answered me I could not have found you."
"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.
He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base, contemptible to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did not resist, and he did it again and again--I forbear to say how many times.
"Isn't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed with a fine gush of enthusiasm.
"Isn't it exquisite?" she echoed with a rush of sympathetic feeling.
"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he cried.
"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely mountain."
Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?"
"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted smilingly.
"Will you be my wife?"
"Yes, sir: I meant to be all the time."
The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the rejected lover."
"Poor fellow! so he shouldn't be left behind. He shall be conductor of the train," she said with a bewitching laugh. His response was not verbal.
"How cold the wind is!" she said.
"Shall I build you another wigwam?"
"No: let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,' and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the creation of the world. That will be something to boa