The Desert and the Sown | Page 6

eternal 'Where do
I come in?' It was simple enough in that garden, with only those two

and nobody outside to feel injured. But we are those two, aren't we?
Isn't everybody--once in a life, and once only?" She turned her face
aside, slighting by her manner the excessive meaning of her words. "I
ask for myself only what I think I have a right to give you--my absolute
undivided attention for those first few years. They say it never lasts!"
she hastened to add with playful cynicism.
Young Bogardus seemed incapable under the circumstances of any
adequate reply. Free as they were in words, there was an extreme
personal shyness between these proud young persons, undeveloped on
the side of passion and better versed in theories of life than in life itself.
They had separated the day after their sudden engagement, and their
nearest approaches to intimacy had been through letters. Naturally the
girl was the bolder, having less in herself to fear.
"That is what I call being simple," she went on briskly. "If you think we
can be that in New York, let us live there. I could be simple there, but
not with you, sir! That terrible East Side would be shaking its gory
locks at us. We should feel that we did it--or you would! Then good-by
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"
"You are my life, liberty, and happiness, and I will be your almoner,"
said Paul, "and dispense you"--
"Dispense with me!" laughed the girl. "And what shall I be doing while
you are dispensing me on the East Side? New York has other sides.
While you go slumming with the Seraph, I shall be talking to the Snake!
Now, do laugh!" she entreated childishly, turning her sparkling face to
his.
"Am I expected to laugh at that?"
"Well, what shall we do? Don't make me harden my heart before it has
had time to soften naturally. Give my poor pagan sympathies a little
time to ripen."
"But you have lived in New York. Did you find it such a strain on your
sympathies?"
"I was a visitor; and a girl is not expected to have sympathies. But to
begin our home there: we should have to strike a note of some sort.
How if my note should jar with yours? Paul, dear, it isn't nice to have
convictions when one is young and going to be married. You know it
isn't. It's not poetic, and it's not polite, and it's a dreadful bore!"
The altruist and lover winced at this. Allowing for exaggeration, which

was the life of speech with her, he knew that Moya was giving him a
bit of her true self, that changeful, changeless self which goes behind
all law and "follows joy and only joy." Her voice dropped into its
sweetest tones of intimacy.
"Why need we live in a crowd? Why must we be pressed upon with all
this fuss and doing? Doing, doing! We are not ready to do anything yet.
Every day must have its dawn;--and I don't see my way yet; I'm hardly
awake!"
"Darling, hush! You must not say such things to me. For you only to
look at me like that is the most terrible temptation of my life. You
make me forget everything a man is bound--that I of all men am bound
to remember."
"Then I will keep on looking! Behold, I am Happiness, Selfishness, if
you like! I have come to stay. No, really, it's not nice of you to act as if
you were under higher orders. You are under my orders. What right
have we to choose each other if we are not to be better to each other
than to any one else?--if our lives belong to any one who needs us, or
our time and money, more than we need it ourselves? Why did you
choose me? Why not somebody pathetic--one of your Poor Things; or
else save yourself whole for all the Poor Things?"
"Now you are 'talking for victory,'" he smiled. "You don't believe we
must be as consistent as all that. Hearts don't have to be coddled like
pears picked for market. But I'm not preaching to you. The heavens
forbid! I'm trying to explain. You don't think this whole thing with me
is a pose? I know I'm a bore with my convictions; but how do we come
by such things?"
"Ah! How do I come not to have any, or to want any?" she rejoined.
"Once for all, let me tell you how I came by mine. Then you will know
just where and how those cries for help take hold on me."
"I don't wish to know. Preserve me from knowing! Why didn't you
choose somebody different?"
He looked