"I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleasant and agreeable, if deplorably shallow person. "I'm not one of those dreadful original women who get up their own awful costumes, and think they're individual because they're different."
"If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared he. "And you're equally good at gardening and decorating houses."
"That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she. "But I like it." She returned to the subject that fitted her thoughts. "You're much livelier than when you went away; I'm sure you've had good news."
"No—nothing. I simply took myself in hand." He reflected in silence, then lifted his head and looked at her with a boyish simplicity and candor. "You see," he proceeded to explain, "I've had something on my mind ever since I came—that is, almost ever since—something that was my own affair entirely. And I let it prey on me—made myself a nuisance and a bore, I've no doubt."
There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as she nodded assent and said: "You were solemner than I thought a human being could be."
"Precisely. Well, that's over. As I said before, I didn't realize how well off I was, how much I had to be thankful for, as the pious people say. I do realize it. And I'm going to behave myself."
Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this vanishing of the last solemn tatters of the tragic romance she had woven about him; for it was clear as the lake that he had gotten over his bereavement in that one brief week, had gotten over it entirely. But somehow she was not scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully this confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for deep emotion. After all, wasn't that the best way to be? Wasn't he perhaps philosopher rather than shallow changeling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth that fire burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans always at the bow of the ship, never at the stern? She, eager to escape from her own shadows and thorns, slipped easily into his mood. "I should say you did have a lot to be thankful for!" answered she. "And you'll soon forget her." She colored at her slip. "I assume it was a love affair," she hastened to add. "We women always do."
"Yes, it was."
"You'll get over it."
"I do not wish to get over it." He was not smiling back at her. She felt his thoughts traveling over land and sea, into Europe, whence came those letters—there were two of them waiting on his desk upstairs. "I do not wish to get over it," he repeated. "I've learned—" His voice, full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were thinking aloud rather than talking to her—"I've learned there's a love deeper than the love that demands—a love that appreciates where it dares not aspire—a love that asks nothing but just silently to love."