When they came to the woods, René said:
“It wants only the river and I could believe that we had never lost each other for a single day. There were just such mists then: the same drip in the trees, the same mysterious shrouding of the life of the woods.”
They wandered for miles, happy, hardly conscious of each other in the joy they shared. The mist clung about their hair, their eyebrows, and whipped up the color in their cheeks and made their eyes to shine. Each new path they came to was a promise of adventure, and always in color and mystery and the play of light the woods fulfilled that promise. René jumped all the stiles and teased Cathleen because she was only a woman and could not do the same, and she pointed out that men needed to do extravagant things like jumping stiles or they became flabby, whereas women had a more instinctive economy and were physically more subtle.
“Women,” said René, “are ridiculous.”
“From a man’s point of view. No more ridiculous than a man from a woman’s point of view. The absurdity disappears when they love each other. Then male extravagance and feminine subtlety are only incidentals——”
“Wise young woman.”
“I’m a fraud really, René. It’s pure Lotta. She was trained as a doctor, you know, and really has watched people. I only guess.”
“That’s my trouble, too. I only feel quite sure when I reach a certain stage of emotion.”
“I never feel quite sure. Nor does Lotta. How can anyone? She says she has observed certain things. She says men and women only make love to each other as a rule because they love each other so little that they have nothing else in common.”
“And you and I——?”