"Like everything else when carried to an extreme—a paradox. Freedom is slavery—to something, to someone."
"Then you are a slave?" she laughed.
"As I thought freedom, I am the freest man on earth to-day."
"You speak that like a king."
"Or a slave."
She puzzled over this a moment as she tried to keep up with him. He had suddenly increased his pace.
"Even on your vacation, you could n't be absolutely free, could you? I feel responsible for that," she apologized.
"You need n't, for you have given me this bit of road. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
So he turned her away from the subject and breathed more easily. She had both loosed him and shackled him. What a procession of golden days she made him see, if only as a mirage. Freedom? If only he could return to that little office and drudge for her unceasingly—toil and hack and hew at stubborn fortune merely in the consciousness that she was somewhere in the world, that would be freedom. He knew it now as she walked close beside him like a beautiful dream. There was no use longer in parrying or feinting. The brush of her sleeve made him dizzy; the sound of her voice set the whole world to music. How trivial seemed the barriers which had loomed so formidable before him a day ago. Given the opportunities he had thrown away and he would hew a path to her as straight as a prairie railroad bed. He would do this, remaining true to his old dreams and to better dreams. He would face New York and tear a road through the very centre of it. He would ram every steel-tipped ideal to its black heart. And all the inspiration he needed to give him this power was the knowledge that somewhere in one of its million crannies, this fragile half formed woman was there, seeing the sky with her silver gray eyes.
"I 'm afraid you are going too fast," she panted.