Ingram followed her, and, as she preceded him gracefully, something forlorn and lonely in her face and figure struck him, over-receptive of such impressions as he was. He thought she drooped. Once she stumbled slightly.
She often wrote till morning, and the fire was still burning brightly in her room. She took the strip of paper on which the names of her guests had been written and, reading it over again, crumpled it in her hand with a little gesture of disgust and weariness, and threw it into the glowing coals.
"Ugh!" she said.
"Why do you have them, then?" asked Paul, more reasonably than politely.
"Oh!" impatiently, "you don't understand." She hesitated a moment. "Don't you ever find such people strangely interesting yourself?"
"The least so of any class I've met," Paul replied, without hesitation.
"I mean—sit down, please—because they are so free."
"——of scruples?"
"Yes, of scruples, if you will. Don't you see as long as one has work to do, or an ideal to follow, or conscience to consider, or a heart even, one's life must, in a sense be incomplete, fettered, bound. One must leave off in unexpected places—never go quite to the logical end, never run the whole gamut."
"That's just as well, isn't it—for other people's sakes?"