She sank down into the seat under the cedar tree. Her hands were clasped nervously together, her head was downcast.
"Your words," she continued, her voice sinking almost to a whisper, yet lacking nothing in distinctness, "are like wine. They mount to the head, they intoxicate, they tempt! And yet all the time one knows that it is not possible. Surely you yourself—in your heart—must know it!"
"Not I!" he answered, fiercely. "The world would have claimed me if it could, but I laughed at it. Our destinies are our own. With our own fingers we mould and shape them."
"There is the little voice," she said, "the little voice, which rings even through our dreams. Life—actual, militant life, I mean—may have its vulgarities, its weariness and its disappointments, but it is, after all, the only place for men and women. The battle may be sordid, and the prizes tinsel—yet it is only the cowards who linger without."
"Then let you and me be cowards," he answered. "We shall at least be happy."
She shook her head a little sadly.
"I doubt it," she answered. "Happiness is a gift, not a prize. It comes seldom enough to those who seek it."
He laughed scornfully.
"I am not a seeker," he cried. "I possess. It seems to me that all the beautiful things of life are here to-night. Listen! Do you hear the sea, the full tide sweeping softly up into the land, a long drawn out undernote of breathless harmonies, the rustling of leaves there in the elm trees, the faint night wind, like the murmuring of angels? Lift your head! Was there anything ever sweeter than the perfume from that hedge of honeysuckle? What can a man want more than these things—and—"
"Go on!"