After all, who could say? He had not meant to marry until years later than he did. He had meant to go to many countries and do many things alone. He had not even thought of Anne in that way, half an hour before they stood alone among the dunes, and his need had shaped itself from the wind and fog.
"Perhaps," Katya said slowly, "it will be never. I am not sure. Perhaps you will never love. I do not know."
She was looking at him with faint bitterness and his interest in her certainty hardened to impatience. "Perhaps I won't," he said shortly, "since, according to you, so few people even know what it is. Why should I expect to be one of the chosen few?"
Katya looked away. "I don't know—perhaps because you need it?"
"Need what?" This was almost as tenuous as some of Anne's involved reactions. First Katya wanted him to be free for his soul, then she wanted this same soul meshed and tangled in an absorbing passion. Roger looked at her impatiently now, turned from him, again gazing out across the roofs. Then his impatience vanished as suddenly as it had come.
Katya looked tired to-night. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had not slept. Her thick lips held the cigarette uncertainly. Swarthy, squat and blunt, Katya's body conveyed a feeling of unsureness, as if she were trembling just beneath the surface. He had no right to intrude on her sympathy, but it was so easy to monopolize Katya's understanding. He laid his hand on her knee and started to feel the vibration of her body. She must be holding it in check by her supreme will.
"Never mind, Katya, let's not probe too deeply to-night."
But he knew that Katya did not hear. She was reading in places hidden from him, the answer to his own question.
"You need to love," she said slowly, as if she were translating from a foreign tongue, "because there is a chance that you are worth it. If you love you may be truly great. If you never love—you will go no higher than now—and—it will be all wasted," she ended in a whisper.
Roger felt that Katya was actually drawing a curtain back before him, a thick, black curtain that hid strange things he did not wish to see.