The Desert and the Sown | Page 6

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 at her with all his passion in his eyes. "I did not choose. Did you?"
"It isn't too late," she whispered. Her face grew hot in the darkness.
"Yes; it is too late--for anything but the truth. Will you listen, sweet? Will you let the nonsense wait?"
"Deeper and deeper! Haven't we reached the bottom yet?"
"Go on! It's the dearest nonsense," she heard him say; but she detected pain in his voice and a new constraint.
"What is it? What is the 'truth'?"
"Oh, it's not so dreadful. Only, you always put me in quite a different class from where I belong, and I haven't had the courage to set you right."
"Children, children!" a young voice called, from the lighted walk above. Two figures were going down the line, one in uniform keeping step beside a girl in white who reefed back her