“Mr. Strong is considerably elated over his luck,” said Agnes at last, after many sidling glances at his gloomy profile.
“That’s the way it goes,” Dr. Slavens sighed. “I don’t believe that chance is blind; I think it’s just perverse. I should say, not counting myself, that Strong is the least deserving of any man in the crowd of us. Look at old Horace Bentley, the lawyer. He doesn’t say anything, but you can see that his heart is aching with disappointment.” 92
“I have noticed it,” she agreed. “He hasn’t said ten words since the last extra.”
“When a man like that dreams, he dreams hard–and deep,” the doctor continued. “But how about yourself?”
She laughed, and placed a restraining hand upon his arm.
“You’re going too fast,” she panted. “I’ll be winded before we get to the river.”
“I guess I was trying to overtake my hopes,” said he. “I’m sorry; we’ll go slower–in all things–the rest of the way.”
She looked at him quickly, a little curiously, but there was no explanation in his eyes, fixed on the graying landscape beyond the river.
“It looks like ashes,” said he softly, with a motion of the hand toward the naked hills. “There is no life in it; there is nothing of the dead. It is a cenotaph of dreams. But how about your claim?”
“It’s a little farther up than I had expected,” she admitted, but with a cheerful show of courage which she did not altogether feel.