“That’s right,” he remarked; “that’s right.”
“I don’t believe in walking just for the sake of walking,” she continued. “It doesn’t do you any good, but if you go for something and get it, that’s what puts the mind and the body right.”
Suddenly his face grew grave. “Yes, that’s it,” he remarked.
“To go for something you want, a long way off. You don’t feel the fag when you’re thinking of the thing at the end; but you’ve got to have the thing at the end, to keep making for it, or there’s no good going—none at all. That’s life; that’s how it is. It’s no good only walking—you’ve got to walk somewhere. It’s no good simply going—you’ve got to go somewhere. You’ve got to fight for something. That’s why, when they take the something you fight for away—when they break you and cripple you, and you can’t go anywhere for what you want badly, life isn’t worth living.”
An anxious look came into her face. This was the first time, since recovering consciousness, that he had referred, even indirectly, to all that had happened. She understood him well—ah, terribly well! It was the tragedy of the man stopped in his course because of one mistake, though he had done ten thousand wise things. The power taken from his hands, the interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, if ever his sight came back: it was sickening, heartbreaking.
She saw it all in his face, but as if some inward voice had spoken to him, his face cleared, the swift-moving hands clasped in front of him, and he said quietly: “But because it’s life, there it is. You have to take it as it comes.”
He stopped a moment, and in the pause she reached out her hand with a sudden passionate gesture, to touch his shoulder, but she restrained herself in time.
He seemed to feel what she was doing, and turned his face towards her, a slight flush coming to his cheeks. He smiled, and then he said: “How wonderful you are! You look—”
He checked himself, then added with a quizzical smile:
“You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda Druse, very well indeed. I like that dark-red dress you’re wearing.”