Andrée went back into the room where the little man was sitting, under the Christmas tree. She fancied he looked a little disconsolate and forlorn, and her heart smote her.
“Al!” she said. “Are you happy?”
“Not so very!” he answered, candidly.
“But why? Haven’t we had a lovely, happy time?”
“I feel—a million miles away from you,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll ever get any nearer to you.”
She sat down beside him and drew his head down on her shoulder.
“I wish you wouldn’t!” she cried. “It—chills me so! I want us to be so very near to each other. I must have it so! I can’t bear it if you don’t understand everything about me. Why did you say that?”
“To-night,” he said, “with this Christmas tree and all—I don’t know—but you—it seemed to me that you were like a child—just playing at life.... And I can’t play! I never did, in my life. I can tell you, that chilled me! You seem so very young and so pretty, and so—heedless—that it makes me feel so very old and worn—”
“You idiot!” she cried, laughing. “It’s just the other way! You’re a little boy; you’re always talking and thinking about such new things, things that come and go. It makes me feel such a wise woman, a sort of Sibyl. I think that’s why I love you—because you’re so awfully earnest and serious about things that I know don’t matter.”
“What things don’t matter? Human wretchedness and cruelty and pain?”