“I don’t like the idea of a pastime becoming so significant. To say the least of it—it’s not fitting.”
“Well,” said Geoffrey, laughing, “I won’t do it any more. You are quite right.”
“Oh, not on account of what I say, please,” she protested, slightly flushing; “you must judge for yourself.”
“So I do. I have judged. You may be sure I would never yield anything I believed in—even to please you. I have always disliked the significance cards might come to assume, so I yield, and gladly, since it does please you.”
“That is a relief. I could not bear to be a standard. And I can’t believe,” she added, “that your winnings at cards can have any significance for your career.”
“Ah, any stick counts in the raft that keeps one floated. But as for my career, if I’ve an object, you mustn’t think it a career. I don’t bother much about my career. I’m a converted character, you see.”
“Converted! You? From what and to what?”
Felicia’s face, on its background of sky and river, turned on him the look he loved—fond and mocking. He returned it, smiling, but gravely. “It is quite true. It’s not that I care less for my ambitions, but differently. My goal has shifted, and everything is at once more simple and more complex; the aims are bigger and far simpler; the fight is bigger, too, but more complex than when the fight was personal. I shouldn’t mind failure, really, or beginning over again. You converted me, you see.”
“I?” said Felicia, with more sadness than surprise.
“Yes, you. Your courage, your sincerity, your faith, that wasn’t the least blind but counted the costs and took the risk every time. Oh, don’t protest; indeed, I hardly know how or why I felt it of you; merely my whole interpretation of things began to twirl on another axis. The idealistic philosophies of my college days came back to me—with all sorts of personal meanings in them. I began to trust life and its significance, since I trusted you so utterly.”