"Well--suppose you came across someone with whom you knew it must last; from whom you expected to find those things which go on past time and all measuring of clocks, would you marry them?"
She came up close to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.
"You can tell me straight out," she said gently. "One of us was bound to find it one of these days. I only hoped it would be me. You can tell me who she is. Go on."
John told her. This was what he had wanted the woman for--first his mother, then Mrs. Rowse, then the little typewriter, then even Jill herself. For it is a woman to whom a man must tell these things--nobody else will do; nobody else will understand.
And when she had heard it all, she looked up with the suspicion of tears in her eyes and smiled.
"Then I guess I'm the fly in the amber," she said. "It won't be a clear bit of stone till I'm gone. Isn't that what you mean?"
And, taking his face in her hands, she kissed his forehead. "You're a funny little boy," she said with a wry smile.
This was the box of bricks, the playing at her dignity. Every woman has them, and while some throw them at your head, the best make patterns--patterns of fine ladies and noble dames. It was a fine lady who would call him a funny little boy. It was a noble dame who would show him that she was not hurt. He had wanted her in his way, in their way--the way she wanted him as well. All men want some woman like that, and there are as good women to supply the need as there are bad ones who would shrink from it. And now, he wanted her no longer. She knew she had to bow her head to something that she could not understand, something that she could not supply. He loved. And they had so easily avoided it.
"Are you going to be married?" she enquired. She longed to ask what the other one was like.
John shrugged his shoulders.