"And recently?"
"Recently," re-echoed he, regaining his composure, "I took it out and meant it to stand down in the corner there to remind me."
He pointed as he spoke, down into the studio below, still dim, since the screens covered the large windows. Her glance followed his motion in an abstracted, impersonal way.
"To remind you?" she in turn echoed.
"To remind me," he took up the words again, "that I am like other men, and that life is at best an aspiration; at worst a despair."
She understood the intimation of his words, but it seemed not to touch her. She did not flush or start, but regarded abstractedly the jocund Cupids. Then she raised her eyes to his face.
"But you removed it here."
"Yes," he said. "Our friend Fenton once said that there is in this world only one good, into which all others resolve themselves—the amelioration of life. The reminder, with all its suggestiveness, was too poignant; I ameliorated my life by putting it up here out of sight."
She did not question him further, but, gathering up her dress, turned and went down the next flight of stairs, which brought her to a landing eight or ten feet from the floor of the studio. There she turned again and looked back at him descending. She almost seemed to herself not to speak, yet by some inward volition her lips formed the words:
"Hope is only a bubble, yet it rims with rainbows whatever we see mirrored in it."