"Are we alike?"
It was a wistful voice. She laughed, a little sorry laugh.
"Well," she said, "at least we are in our playhouse together."
"Ah!" He seemed to speak in spite of prudence. "That's not because we are alike. It is because we are different." But he went on at once, as if to keep her from interrogating that, or even perhaps remembering it. "I have forbidden myself to think of some things. When they came upon me, I went out and dug them into the ground."
She was filled that night with an imperative sense of life. It made her forget even him and his claim to be heard. The great resolve in her to be for once understood was like a crowning wave drenching the farthest shore.
"I have never had enough of life," she avowed passionately. "I have always had the appearance of it, the promise that the next minute the cup would be given me. But the cup was never there. Or if it was, there was muddy water in it. The lights have never been bright enough, the music has never gone on long enough. Why!" She seemed frightened. "Is that like my father? Do I get that from him?"
"It is because you are young," said Osmond. "And because you are beautiful and the world ought to be yours—to put your foot on it."
The passion of his voice recalled her.
"No," she answered humbly. "Not to put my foot on anything. No! no! no! Playmate," she added, "you are the dearest thing in all the world."
The voice laughed out harshly. The man was lying prone at full length where she could not see him, his hands upon the earth he loved, his fostering, yet unheeding mother that had saved his life for her own service. At that moment, it seemed to him, his eye turned inward upon himself, as if there were foolish irony in that friendly comment. He looked to himself rather one of the earth forces, supremely strong, waiting for some power to guide it.