“What difference does it make what you call it? Two people like to be together, seem to fit into one another’s lives, isn’t that love?”
Clara smiled. “It’s not the kind of love that Polly Street will give the man she marries,” she said. “You know that as well as I. And it’s not a matter of years, it’s temperament. An actress told me once that when it came to a question of comparison between her married life and her stage life, she could say instantly that it was her stage life that had meant the most to her. She was happily married, too. I’m a bit like her. I can get more downright exaltation over my music when it goes right than I ever got out of any love affair. I think my talent is for friendship rather than for love.”
“Clara,” Hard’s voice shook, “I tell you, you wrong yourself. Neither you nor that woman were happily married if—oh, I don’t want to be maudlin——”
“Bless your heart, Henry, you couldn’t be, any more than I could. Perhaps it’s the New England conscience——”
“I haven’t a New England conscience,” replied Hard. “My conscience is as elastic and pleasantly disposed as an Irishman’s. Bunker Hill casts no blight upon me.”
“Henry, this is all very nice; but I’m dying of hunger.”
“Will you be afraid to stay here if I go back to Casa Grande and fetch you something?”
“Wild horses couldn’t hold me in this God-forsaken spot without you, Henry! Don’t think of it. I—I’ll go with you, though.”
“You can’t walk it.”
“Then I’ll die on the road. But how about your knee?” She stopped in discouragement.