“I’ve been thinking ever since last night about Dick,” she said. “He is so different from the buoyant creature of last summer. And it is only a year.”
“Well, perhaps this is a phase.” He rested on his oars and looked at her. “Dick is healthy, and joy is his normal state. He ought to be able to recover from his malady.”
“Sometimes I think it is permanent.”
“I am almost afraid, too. But you see you can not get any bargains in the department store of this world. You have to pay full price for everything. If you want self-indulgence, you have to pay your health; if you want health, you have to pay self-control. You never pay less than the value of what you get, and you are often horribly over-charged for a very inferior article. Now Dick wanted Lena Quincy. He bought a little gratification, and paid—”
“Everything he had,” answered Norris abruptly. “Do you think I have not watched his courage and ideals wither as if they had been frosted? He is numb. ‘Heavy as frost,’ Wordsworth said, and that’s the weightiest figure he could find. It did not take her a month to begin to change him. In three months she has him well started. Isn’t it a pity that the worse one of the two should have the controlling force? But Dick’s very volatility that we love has laid him open to this thing.”
“I’m glad,” said Madeline slowly, “that he has his political interest.”
“Yes, he’s going into it with a kind of fury.”
“Won’t that give him a big outlet?”
“He may get a lot of satisfaction and do a really creditable thing.”