She pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, and said, smiling at him, "I am not crying." But fresh tears gushed forth and dimmed the image of her loveliness.
"I can understand what it is," he said regretfully. "I have been inconsiderate, and by talking so happily of my own work I have revived your grief about your old art. I am very sorry."
She started back as if she had seen a ghost. Then, with a violent effort, she collected herself.
"No, no; that isn't it. Really, it isn't," she assured him.
But he persisted in reproaching himself, and his every word was a stab, when she thought of her own unworthiness.
"Let us go," she begged. "So many conflicting feelings overwhelm me. I am both happy and unhappy.... Outside in the air I shall be calmer."
It was long past midnight when they left the restaurant, A cold wind rippled the water and sighed among the bare branches.
He offered her his arm, and she clung to it as if she had been at home there for countless ages. Neither spoke for some time.
"In five minutes he'll be gone," she thought, and she could hardly bear the pain the threatened parting cost her.
"I have it on my conscience," he said at last, "that I have made so much of my work in our conversation you will think me conceited. I know it's not of greater importance than hundreds of other people's. I believe that in nearly every vigorous-minded young manhood there is such a goal to strive for, and to point the way. One fellow may have a book to write, another a great business to work up, a third may have others dependent on him, and many find it as much as they can do to swim against the current. It's all the same thing. If we let ourselves drift, we're lost; and none of us want to be lost, do we?"