"Do you see?" she added.
"Yes," said Andrew slowly. "I think I see. That's what I meant; that's how I thought you would feel. I'm sorry. You're right, of course: Paris is no place for a girl—like you."
"It's no place for any one who loves what's clean and decent," said Margery hotly. "It's no place for a man! I'm not supposed to know, am I, about such things? And perhaps I don't. I couldn't tell you exactly what I mean, even if I wanted to. But I feel it here." She laid her hand upon her throat. "I feel the danger that I can't describe. It strangles me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for its influence upon any one for whom—for whom I might care. I'm afraid for myself. It's nothing definite, you see, and that's just where it seems to me to be so dangerous. Do you remember when we were reading Tennyson at Beverly—'The Lotus Eaters'?"
She paused for an instant, and then, looking away from him again, recited the lines:
"'For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings,
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things,
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.'"
There was something in her voice more eloquent than the music of the words. Andrew came forward a step, as if he would have touched her, but she looked up and met his eyes.
"And you're afraid—?" he began.
"I'm afraid," she answered, "that we've come to a land where it seems always afternoon; and that if we don't take heed, my friend, we may not fight a good fight, we may not keep the faith."
She made an odd little weary gesture.