Herrick's hand took Jean's without pressure, so that it seemed part of the quiet beauty of the room, and they crossed to the window. The hills beyond the Bay etched themselves in faint purple and amethyst on the paling sky. They stood silent, looking out across the low roofs, to the Bay, with its wall of hills and the white ferryboats moving majestically in the dignity of distance.
At last Jean turned back to the room.
"One could do great things here," she said slowly as if thinking aloud, unconscious of Herrick's presence.
"Yes. One could do great things, if one were happy."
The emphasis drew her attention and she looked at him.
"Isn't he happy? It doesn't seem possible, quite, to live in a room like this and not be happy."
"Flop? I don't know. As happy or unhappy as every one else, I suppose."
Herrick's eyes sought the Bay again. She was impossible as a grown woman. She was more like a boy, with her annoying way of looking straight into his eyes, and her silly, impersonal interpretations. No doubt she thought that all Flop needed was a room like this, and twenty-four hours a day, to paint masterpieces. And Herrick thought of all the love and hate, the reckless joy and pain that had been born and killed among the soft rugs and old tapestries and small, pure marbles.
"I don't know that it matters so much, after all, whether we are happy or not, as long as we are alive."
Jean spoke with difficulty, for Herrick's sudden turning away made her feel that she had really known him only two weeks, and knew nothing whatever of his life. In the shadow of the green curtains, his face looked whiter and the soft curve of his lips hard, as if he were remembering something that hurt very much. A tremendous necessity to comfort him swept Jean into speech, to make him see that nothing mattered except being alive as he must be, not hampered and swaddled with the crowding of uncongenial personalities. She contrasted Herrick with his ability and definite ambition and friends, with the long, dead evenings and the killing Sundays with Tom and Elsie and her mother.