"Of course, at first," she explained painstakingly, "you think there are just about ten thousand things that you've simply got to have, but when you really stop to sort them out, and pick and choose a bit, and narrow them all down to actual essentials; narrow them all down to just the 'Passions of the Soul,' as it were, why, then, there really aren't so many after all! Only one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," she counted on her fingers. "At first, for instance," she persisted frankly, "it seemed to me that I could never, never die happy until I had possessed a very large—oh, I mean an inordinately large amethyst brooch that simply wallowed in pearls, but honestly now as a real treasure-trove, I can see that I'd infinitely rather be able to remember that once upon a time I'd—stroked a lion's face; just one, long, slow, soft-furred, yellow stroke from the browny-pink tip of his nose to the extremest shaggy end of his mane—and he hadn't bitten me!"
"My Heavens!" gasped the man. "Are you crazy? What kind of a list have you been making out anyway?"
A little acridly she thrust both her list and her hands into the side pockets of her riding skirt.
"What kind of a list did you think I would make out?" she asked sharply. "Something all about machinery? And getting a contract for city paving stones? Or publicly protesting the new football rules? Goodness! Does it have to be a 'wise' list? Does it have to be a worthy list? Something that would really look commendable in a church magazine? This was all your idea, you know! You asked me, didn't you, to write out, just for fun, the things I'd got to have before I'd be willing to die?"
"Oh, come now," laughed the man. "Please don't get stuffy about it. You surprised me so about stroking the lion's face that I simply had to chaff you a little. Truly, I care a great deal about seeing that list. When you got off the train that day it rattled me a confounded lot to see that your camping togs were cut out of exactly the same piece of cloth that mine were. Professor Ellis and his wife and Doctor Andrews jollied me a good bit about it in fact, but—hang it all—it's beginning to dawn on me rather cozily, though I admit still embarrassingly, that maybe your mind and mine are cut out of the same piece of cloth, too. Please let me see what you've written!"
With a grimace that was half reluctance, half defiance, the young woman pulled the paper from her pocket, smoothed it out on her knees for an instant and handed it to him.
"Oh, very well, then," she said. "Help yourself to the only authentic list of my 'Heart's Desires.'" Then suddenly her whole face brightened with amusement and she shook a sun-browned finger threateningly at him. "Now remember," she warned him, "I don't have to justify this list, no matter how trivial it sounds, no matter how foolish even; it is excuse enough for it—it is dignity enough for it, that it happens to be so."
"Yes, surely," acknowledged the man.
Either consciously or unconsciously—then—he took off his battered slouch hat and placed it softly on the seat beside him. The act gave the very faintest possible suggestion of reverence to the joke. Then, rather slowly and hesitatingly, after the manner of a man who is not specially accustomed to reading aloud, he began:
