"How much of what, Florrie?"
"Of life. Of the things we thought and felt. Is there such a thing as love, Billy?"
He got up under the necessity of thought and stood, hands in his pockets and legs apart, looking over the garden beds. He might have been gazing out to sea for the Islands of the Blest.
"Florrie," he said at length, "I guess there is."
"Did you love me, Billy? No compliments. We're beyond them."
"Yes," said Billy, after another pause. "I think I did. You were a great deal to me at that time. And when I found it was no use, other people were a great deal to me, one after another. Several of 'em. I looked upon it then as a species of game. But they didn't last, Florrie. You did. You always give me a kind of a queer feeling; you're all mixed up in my mind with pink and blue and hats with rosebuds on 'em and college songs."
It was not much like a grand passion, but it was something, the honest confession of a boy.
"I thought it was a game, too," she said musingly. "Do you suppose it was, Billy? Or were we wrong?"
Billy whirled about and faced her.
"Dead wrong! No, Florrie, it never was meant for a game. It's earnest. The ones that take it so are the ones that inherit the earth. No, not that—but they go in for all they're worth and they've something left to show for it. They don't put their money into tinsel and see it fade."