"We're at opposite poles in everything," she went on. "I don't believe in the things you believe in. I don't see life with your vision at all. I never shall. We'd be in a continual clash. I like you but I couldn't possibly live with you—you couldn't live with me. I rebel at the future I can see for us. Apart from yourself, the things you'd want to share with me I despise. If I had to live in an atmosphere of sermons and shams, of ministerial sanctimoniousness and material striving for a bigger church and a bigger salary, I'd suffocate—I'd hate myself—and in the end I'd hate you too."
A little note of scorn crept into her voice, and she stopped. When she spoke again her tone had changed, deepened into uncertainty, freighted with wistfulness.
"I'm not good—not in your sense of the word," she said. "I don't even want to be. It would take all the joy out of living. I want to sing and dance and be vibrantly alive. I want to see far countries and big cities, to go about among people whose outlook isn't bounded by a forest and a lake shore, nor by the things you set store by. And I'll be a discontented pendulum until I do.
"Why," she burst out passionately, "I'd be the biggest little fool on earth to marry you just because—just because I like you, because you kissed me and for a minute made me feel that life could be bounded by you and kisses. You're only the second possible man I've ever seen. You and Tommy Ashe. And before you came I could easily have persuaded myself that I loved Tommy."
"Now you think perhaps you love me, but that you might perhaps care in the same way for the next attractive man who comes along? Is that it?" Thompson asked with a touch of bitterness.
"I might think so—how can one tell?" she sighed. "But I'm very sure my impulses will never plunge me into anything headlong, as you would have me plunge. Don't you see," she made an impatient gesture, "we're just like a couple of fledgling birds trying our wings. And you want to proceed on the assumption that we're equal to anything, sure of everything. I know I'm not. You—"
She made again that quick, expressive gesture with her hands. Something about it made Thompson suddenly feel hopeless and forlorn, the airy castles reared overnight out of the stuff of dreams a tumbled heap about him. He sat down on one of the rude chairs, and turned his face to look out the window, a lump slowly gathering in his throat.
"All right," he said. "Good-by."
If his tone was harsh and curt he could not help that. It was all he could say and the only possible fashion of saying it. He wanted to cry aloud his pain, the yearning ache that filled him, and he could not, would not—no more than he would have whined under pure physical hurt. But when he heard the faint rustle of her cotton dress and her step outside he put his face on his hands and took his breath with a shuddering sigh.
At that, he was mistaken. Sophie had not gone. There was the quick, light pad of her feet on the floor, her soft warm hands closed suddenly about his neck, and he looked up into eyes bright and wet. Her face dropped to a level with his own.