"If you would only teach us all," he murmured, "how to acquire it."
"I suppose people would say that it is a matter of temperament," she
continued. "With me I believe that it is more. It has become a part of
the order of my life. Whatever may happen to-morrow I shall be none
the better for anticipating its miseries to-day."
"I wonder," he said, a trifle irrelevantly, "what the future has in
store for you."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Is that not rather a profitless speculation, my friend?"
He seemed deaf to her interruption. His grey eyes burned under his
shaggy eyebrows. He leaned towards her as though anxious to see more
of her face than that faint delicate profile gleaming like marble in
the uncertain light.
"You were born for great things," he said huskily. "For great
passions, for great accomplishments. Will you find your destiny, I
wonder, or will you go through life like so many others--a wanderer,
knocking ever at empty doors, homeless to the last? Oh, if one could
but find the way to your heart."
She laughed gaily.
"Dear friend," she said, "remember that you are speaking to one who
has failed in the only serious object which she has ever sought to
accomplish. My destiny, I am afraid, is going to lead me into the
ruts."
He shook his head.
"You were never born," he declared, "to follow the well worn roads. I
wonder," he added, after a moment's pause, "whether you ever realize
how young you are."
"Young? I am twenty-four."
"Yet you are very young. Anna, why will you persist in this
single-handed combat with life?"
"Don't!" she cried.
"But I must, I will," he answered fiercely. "Oh, I know you would stop
me if you could. This time you cannot. You are the woman I love, Anna.
Let me make your future for you. Don't be afraid that I shall stunt
it. I will give you a broad free life. You shall have room to develop,
you shall live as you will, where you will, only give me the right to
protect you, to free you from all these petty material cares."
She laid her hand softly upon his.
"Dear friend," she said, "do you not think that you are breaking an
unspoken compact? I am very sorry. In your heart you know quite well
that all that you have said is useless."
"Ay," he repeated, looking away from her. "Useless--worse than
useless."
"You are foolish," she declared, with a note of irritability in her
tone. "You would appear to be trying to destroy a comradeship which
has been very, very pleasant. For you know that I have made up my mind
to dig a little way into life single-handed. I, too, want to
understand--to walk with my head in the light. Love is a great thing,
and happiness a joy. Let me go my own way towards them. We may
meet--who can tell? But I will not be fettered, even though you would
make the chains of roses. Listen."