"Is that laziness?" he asked. "I don't think so."
"Rest, then," she said.
"Ah! That is a very different thing!" he replied. "We all need rest."
"Especially you," she said, "who carry about with you always the memory of some things from which you can never escape."
He looked at her quickly, but it was obvious that her speech was wholly unpremeditated.
"I often wonder," she said calmly, "when I see you in the evenings, how you manage to shake off all your anxieties so easily, for I suppose," she continued, "that success, like everything else, carries always its anxieties."
"Sometimes more than failure," he answered.
"Well," she continued, "it doesn't seem possible to associate the word 'failure' with you. Some day you must tell me the whole story of your life. I can scarcely believe that there has ever been a time when you haven't succeeded in anything you undertook."
He laughed grimly. "You should have been with me in Africa," he said, "after the fighting was over. We expected to go about picking up gold almost on the streets."
"You were too sanguine," she laughed.