I, indeed, am staring at her with a black and stupid surprise.
"Good Heavens!" say I, bluntly; "what _have_ you been doing to yourself?
_how_ happy you look!" I have always known theoretically that happiness was becoming; and I have always thought Barbara most fair.
"Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well, Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn, Fair as the angel that said, 'Hail!' she seemed," but _now_, what a lovely brightness, like that of clouds remembering the gone sun, shines all about her! What a radiant laughter in her eyes! What a splendid carnation on her cheeks! (How glad I am that I did not tell!) "Do I ?" she says, softly, and hiding her face, with the action of a shy child, on my shoulders.

"I dare say." "_Good_ Heavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before, and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation.
"And _you_ ?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "and _you_?
you are pleased too, are not you ?" "Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the forenoon, "_delighted_! I never was so pleased in my life.

I told you so in my letters, did not I ?" A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment.
"Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again.

I thought that you--would have such a--such a great deal to say about it." "So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is--it is difficult to begin, is not it?
and you know I never was good at expressing myself, was I ?" We have sat down.

I am not facing her.