XII.--Passionate Paragraphs

(An extract from a recent (very recent) novel, illustrating the new beauties of language and ideas that are being rapidly developed by the twentieth century press.)

His voice as he turned towards her was taut as a tie-line.

"You don't love me!" he hoarsed, thick with agony. She had angled into a seat and sat sensing-rather-than-seeing him.

For a time she silenced. Then presently as he still stood and enveloped her,--

"Don't!" she thinned, her voice fining to a thread.

"Answer me," he gloomed, still gazing into-and-through her.

She half-heard half-didn't-hear him.

Night was falling about them as they sat thus beside the river. A molten afterglow of iridescent saffron shot with incandescent carmine lit up the waters of the Hudson till they glowed like electrified uranium.

For a while they both sat silent,--looming.

"It had to be," she glumped.

"Why, why?" he barked. "Why should it have had to have been or (more hopefully) even be to be? Surely you don't mean because of money?"

She shuddered into herself.

The thing seemed to sting her (it hadn't really).

"Money!" she almost-but-not-quite-moaned. "You might have spared me that!"

He sank down and grassed.

And after they had sat thus for another half-hour grassing and growling and angling and sensing one another, it turned out that all that he was trying to say was to ask if she would marry him.

And of course she said yes.