“Oh, don’t say that!” exclaimed Beatrice. “You want to enjoy life.”
“Just so! Ah, just so!” exclaimed Mr Allport. “But all the same—it’s like this—you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to say—what’s the good, after all? It’s merely living because you’ve got to.”
“You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it differently myself; yet I’ll be bound I have more cause for grumbling. What’s the trouble now?”
“We-ell—you can’t lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to say—it’s nothing very definite. But, after all—what is there to do but to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That’s the best way.”
Beatrice became suddenly grave.
“You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,” she said. “You don’t think of the others.”
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “What does it matter? Look here—who’d care? What I mean to say—for long?”
“That’s all very easy, but it’s cowardly,” replied Beatrice gravely.
“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Allport, “it’s true—isn’t it?”
“It is not—and I should know,” replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.