The Brimming Cup | Page 7

you afraid that they'll get the best of us, inevitably, unless
we let ourselves get so dull, and second-rate and passive, that we can't
even be bad? Are you afraid of being fooled? Do you believe in
yourself at all?"
He was silent for some time, his eyes steadily fixed on some invisible
realm. When he spoke it was with a firm, natural, unshaken accent.
"Why, yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But

I don't think it matters the least bit in the world beside the fact that I
love you. That's big enough to overtop everything else."
He raised his voice and spoke out boldly to the undefined specter in her
mind. "And if it's the mating instinct you mean, that may be fooling
both of us, because of our youth and bodily health . . . good heavens!
Isn't our love deep enough to absorb that a million times over, like the
water of a little brook flowing into the sea? Do you think that, which is
only a little trickle and a harmless and natural and healthy little trickle,
could unsalt the great ocean of its savor? Why, Marise, all that you're
so afraid of, all that they've made you so afraid of, . . . it's like the little
surface waves . . . well, call it the big storm waves if you want to . . .
but nothing at all, the biggest of them, compared to the stillness in the
depths of the sea. Why, I love you! Do I believe in myself? Of course I
believe in myself, because I have you."
She drew a long sigh and, closing her eyes, murmured, "I feel as though
I were lifted up on a great rock." After a moment, opening her eyes, she
said, "You are better than I, you know. I'm not at all sure that I could
say that. I never knew before that I was weak. But then I never met
strength before."
"You're not weak," he told her; adding quaintly, "maybe a little
overballasted; with brains and sensitiveness and under-ballasted with
experience, that's all. But you haven't had much chance to take on any
other cargo, as yet."
She was nettled at this, and leaving her slow, wide-winged poise in the
upper airs, she veered and with swallow-like swiftness darted down on
him. "That sounds patronizing and elder-brotherish," she told him. "I've
taken on all sorts of cargo that you don't know anything about. In ever
so many ways you seem positively . . . naïve! You needn't go thinking
that I'm always highstrung and fanciful. I never showed that side to
anybody before, never! Always kept it shut up and locked down and
danced and whooped it up before the door. You know how everybody
always thinks of me as laughing all the time. I do wish everything
hadn't been said already so many times. If it weren't that it's been said
so often, I'd like to say that I have always been laughing to keep from

crying."
"Why don't you say it, if that is what you mean?" he proposed.
She looked at him marveling. "I'm so fatuous about you!" she
exclaimed; "the least little thing you say, I see the most wonderful
possibilities in it. I know you'd say what you meant, no matter how
many thousands had said it before. And since I know it's not stupidness
in you, why, it seems to me just splendidly and simply courageous, a
kind of courage I'd never thought of before. I see now, how, after all,
those stupid people had me beaten, because I'd always thought that a
person either had to be stupid so that he didn't know he was saying
something everybody else had said, or else not say it, even if he wanted
to, ever so much, and it was just what he meant."
"Don't you think maybe you're too much bothered about other people,
anyhow?" he suggested, mildly; "whether they're stupid or have said
things or not? What difference does it make, if it's a question of what
you yourself feel? I'd be just as satisfied if you gave all your time to
discovering the wonderful possibilities in what I say. It would give me
a chance to conceal the fact that I get all out of breath trying to follow
what you mean."
This surprised her into a sudden laugh, outright and ringing. He looked
down at her sparkling face, brilliant in its mirth as a child's, and said
seriously, "You must instantly think of something perfectly prosaic and
commonplace to say, or I shall be forced to take you in my arms and
kiss you a great many times, which might have Lord knows what effect
on