His strong fingers closed on hers. She did not withdraw her hand. He leaned forward to look into her upraised eyes in the growing darkness.
"That seemed the proper place to keep it. I value your friendship very much—too much to presume on it. We are at opposite ends of the world—I'm quite aware of that. When this little holiday of yours is over you'll go back to your everyday life and surroundings, and I don't want you to take with you one regret or unpleasant memory."
"I don't know what I shall take," she replied gravely. "But I'm not at all sure that I shall go back."
"I don't understand."
"Suppose," she said, "suppose that you were a moderately rich man, in good health, young, without business or profession, without any special talent; and that your friends—your social circle—were very much like yourself. Suppose that your life was spent in clubs, country houses, travel—that you had nothing on earth to do but amuse yourself, nothing to look forward to but repetitions of the same amusement. What would become of you?"
"To be perfectly truthful," he replied, "I should probably go to the devil."
"The correct answer," said Clyde gravely. "I am going to the devil. Oh, I'm strictly conventional. I mean that I'm stagnating utterly—mentally, morally, and physically. I'm degenerating. My life is a feminine replica of the one I suggested to you. I'm wearied to death of it—of killing time aimlessly, of playing at literature, at charity, at uplifting people who don't want to be uplifted. And there's nothing different ahead. Must I play at living until I die?"
"But you will marry," he predicted. "You will meet the right man. That will make a difference."
"Perhaps I have met him."
"Then I wish you great happiness."