"I am beginning to regret, Mr. Strangewey, that I ever introduced you to Sophy," Louise remarked, as she sank back into her chair. "You won't believe that all my friends are as frivolous as this, will you?"
"They aren't," Sophy proclaimed confidently. "I am the one person who succeeds in keeping Louise with her feet upon the earth. She has never had supper here before. Dry biscuits, hot milk, and a volume of poems are her relaxation after the theater. She takes herself too seriously."
"I wonder if I do!" Louise murmured, as she helped herself to caviar.
She was suddenly pensive. Her eyes seemed to be looking out of the restaurant. Sophy was exchanging amenities with a little party of friends at the next table.
"One must sometimes be serious," John remarked, "or life would have no poise at all."
"I have a friend who scolds me," she confided. "Sometimes he almost loses patience with me. He declares that my attitude toward life is too analytical. When happiness comes my way, I shrink back. I keep my emotions in the background, while my brain works, dissecting, wondering, speculating. Perhaps what he says is true. I believe that if one gets into the habit of analyzing too much, one loses all elasticity of emotion, the capacity to recognize and embrace the great things when they come."
"I think you have been right," John declared earnestly. "If the great things come as they should come, they are overwhelming, they will carry you off your feet. You will forget to speculate and to analyze. Therefore, I think you have been wise and right to wait. You have run no risk of having to put up with the lesser things."
She leaned toward him across the rose-shaded table. For those few seconds they seemed to have been brought into a wonderfully intimate communion of thought. A wave of her hair almost touched his forehead. His hand boldly rested upon her fingers.
"You talk," she whispered, "as if we were back upon your hilltops once more!"
He turned his head toward the little orchestra, which was playing a low and tremulous waltz tune.