man, will you? I had no
idea you were taking it so seriously. I... Well, by Jove!"

Galusha did not speak. The same queer ecstatic brightness was upon his
face and he was looking now, not at the grinning cherub, but at the
distant horizon line of gray-green ocean and slate-gray sky. Cabot's
grip on his shoulder tightened.

"So you really want to marry her," he said.... "Humph!... Well, I'll be
hanged! Loosh, you--you--well, you certainly can surprise a fellow when
you really make a business of it."

The brightness was fading from Galusha's face. He sighed, removed his
spectacles, and seemed to descend from the clouds. He sighed again, and
then smiled his faint smile.

"Dear me," he said, "how ridiculous it was, wasn't it? You like a joke,
don't you, Cousin Gussie?"

"Was it a joke, Loosh? You didn't look nor speak like a joker."

"Eh? Oh, yes, it was a joke, of course. Is it likely that a woman like
that would marry ME?"

Again he astonished his relative into turning and staring at him. "Marry
you?" he cried. "SHE marry YOU? For heaven's sake, you don't imagine
there is any doubt that she would marry you if you asked her to, do
you?"

"Why, of course. Why should she?"

"Why SHOULD she? Why shouldn't she jump at the chance, you mean!"

"Oh--oh, no, I don't. No, indeed. You are joking again, Cousin Gussie,
of course you are. Women don't like me; they laugh at me, they always
have, you know. I don't blame them. Very often I laugh at myself. I am
eccentric. I'm 'queer'; that is what every one says I am--queer. I don't
seem to think just as other people do, or--or to be able to dress as
they do--or--ah--oh, dear, everything. It used to trouble me a good deal
when I was young. I used to try, you know--ah--try very hard not to be
queer. I hated being queer. But it wasn't any use, so at last I gave
up trying. My kind of queerness is something one can't get over,
apparently; it's a sort of incurable disease. Dear me, yes, quite
incurable."

He had moved forward and his coat-tails had fallen into their normal
position, so the "queerness" of his outward appearance was modified;
but, as he stood there, with his puzzled, wistful expression, slowly
and impersonally picking himself to pieces, so to speak, Cabot felt
an overwhelming rush of pity for him, pity and a sort of indignant
impatience.

"Oh, shut up, Galusha!" he snapped. "Don't be so confoundedly absurd.
You are one of the cleverest men in the world in your li