"My darling," laying his face down upon her neck among her yellow
curls, "I shall never call another by the dear name I call you
now, my wife."
"Oh, Arthur," and Nina's cheeks flushed with indignant surprise,
that he, too, should prove refractory. Everything indeed, was
getting upside down. "Why not?" she asked. "Don't you love
Miggie?"
"Yes, very, very dearly! but it is too much to hope that she will
ever be mine. I do not deserve it. You ask me my forgiveness,
Nina. Alas! alas! I have tenfold more need of yours. It did not
matter that we both wearied of our marriage vows, made when we
were children--did not matter that you are crazy--I had no right
to love another.
"But you have paid for it all a thousand times!" interrupted Nina.
"You are a better Arthur than you were before, and Nina never
could see the wrong in your preferring beautiful, sensible Miggie,
to crazy, scratching, biting, teasing Nina, even if Richard had
said over a few words, of which neither of us understood the
meaning, or what it involved, this taking for better or worse.
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