Mariana glowed suddenly. She looked up at him, a woman's regard for power warming her eyes. To her impressionable temperament there seemed an element of sublimity in his ethical composure.
"Teach me," she said, simply. Anthony smiled. If he seemed a Stoic to Mariana, it was not because he was one, and perhaps he was conscious of it. But our conceptions of others are colored solely by their attitudes towards ourselves, and not in the least by their attitudes towards the universe, which, when all is said, is of far less consequence.
"I should have first to learn the lesson myself," he answered.
"Would you, if you could?" asked Mariana.
For an instant he looked at her thoughtfully. "Teach you what?" he questioned. "Teach you to endure instead of to enjoy? To know instead of to believe? To play with skulls and cross-bones instead of with flowers and sunshine? No, I think not."
Mariana grew radiant. She felt a desire to force from him a reluctant confession of liking. "Why wouldn't you?" she demanded.
"Well, on the whole, I think your present point of view better suited to you. And everything, after all, is in the point of view." He leaned against the railing, looking down into the street. "Look over and tell me what you see. Is it not the color of those purple egg-plants in the grocer's stall? the pretty girl in that big hat, standing upon the corner? the roguish faces of those ragamuffins at play? Well, I see these, but I see also the drooping figure of the woman beside the stall; the consumptive girl with the heavy bundle, going from her work; the panting horses that draw the surface cars."
They both gazed silently from the balcony. Then Mariana turned away. "It is the hour for my music," she said. "I must go."
The sunlight caught the nimbus around her head and brightened it with veins of gold.
"All joy goes with you," he answered, lightly. "And I shall return to work."