Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too accurately prophetic in every probability. “But, papa,” she said, to console him, “don't you think maybe there isn't such a thing as a 'finish,' after all! You say perhaps we don't learn to live till we die but maybe that's how it is AFTER we die, too—just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe through trouble again, even after that.”
“Oh, it might be,” he sighed. “I expect so.”
“Well, then,” she said, “what's the use of talking about a 'finish?' We do keep looking ahead to things as if they'd finish something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything. They're just part of going on. I'll tell you—I looked ahead all summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to myself, 'Well, if that happens, I'm finished!' But it wasn't so, papa. It did happen, and nothing's finished; I'm going on, just the same only——” She stopped and blushed.
“Only what?” he asked.
“Well——” She blushed more deeply, then jumped up, and, standing before him, caught both his hands in hers. “Well, don't you think, since we do have to go on, we ought at least to have learned some sense about how to do it?”
He looked up at her adoringly.
“What I think,” he said, and his voice trembled;—“I think you're the smartest girl in the world! I wouldn't trade you for the whole kit-and-boodle of 'em!”
But as this folly of his threatened to make her tearful, she kissed him hastily, and went forth upon her errand.
Since the night of the tragic-comic dinner she had not seen Russell, nor caught even the remotest chance glimpse of him; and it was curious that she should encounter him as she went upon such an errand as now engaged her. At a corner, not far from that tobacconist's shop she had just left when he overtook her and walked with her for the first time, she met him to-day. He turned the corner, coming toward her, and they were face to face; whereupon that engaging face of Russell's was instantly reddened, but Alice's remained serene.
She stopped short, though; and so did he; then she smiled brightly as she put out her hand.