depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing
you--seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that--nothing
worth telling you about."

Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself
thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to
affect mirth to seem at ease.

"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since
these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--"

"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know."

"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?"

"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old
way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few
hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words
that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve
them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved
one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of
the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and
brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work
in little variations of his own to-day. For example--"

"I'm sure we'd best be returning."

"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active
and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic
advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--"