“For a little,” she said thoughtfully, “I imagined you were about to tell me something, but you’re still reticent and I shan’t press you. Well, here we are, all alone together, on the outskirts of nowhere, and between us we have solved many riddles of the race. And I have been immoral and smoked a cigarette, if I wasn’t immoral in the first place in coming here with you. But it seemed that in no other way could I find the Valley of Arcana—and here I am. I wonder if we’re to begin crawling to victory to-morrow?”
“I don’t like those clouds that we saw at sunset,” he remarked. “But they’re all gone now. The sky’s as clear as ever.”
Charmian gaped, placed a slim hand over her distorted mouth, and patted the aperture, ending with a burst of air that was wrenched out of her until her jaw muscles seemed to creak.
“Pardon me,” she laughed. “I couldn’t help it—I’m about all in. That means the blankets for mine. Good night, Doctor.
“How you have interested me,” she sighed, as she rose to her feet and stretched her arms and torso as unreservedly as a young panther would. “You have worked so much—have accomplished so much. You make me feel like a baseball fan in the grandstand, yelling his head off over the good work of some famous player in the field. I hate fans. They’re so willing to get entertainment from the achievements of others. They dote on baseball, know all the players by name and their records from A to Z. They never miss a game, never fail to bloat their blood vessels by shouting their approval. Yet not one of them can toss a rubber ball twenty feet in air and be sure of catching it!
“I’m not picking on baseball fans in particular. I just used them as a handy example. All of us in this world but the thinkers are fans. We’re wild about the conveniences that electricity has brought to us, but not one out of a hundred of us could splice a broken electric wire. We rave over a famous lecturer or writer, but how many of us try to become lecturers or writers? Can you imagine a man—I know him—who never misses a professional billiard game, knows all the professional players, all the niceties of their work, but never takes a billiard cue in hand?
“Most of us are fans—we admire and worship and gloat over the success of the few, particularly if it is designed for our entertainment, but never make an effort at being anything ourselves. Oh, I’m sick of shouting from the grandstand, Doctor! I want to do something. I want to be one of the few who make the world go round for the others!”
“Leave the grandstand, then,” said the doctor softly, “and come down on the diamond with me.”
Charmian caught her breath at the suddenness of it. She had not suspected that she was leading herself into a trap. And she had given herself to Andy! She had let him fondle her, had told him that she loved him, with her lips pressed to his.
“I—I haven’t finished thinking about it,” she said hurriedly, and hastened off to her blankets.