They stepped aside to avoid the lights of the car. Somehow, both felt the necessity of keeping clear of publicity.
“I won’t have you maligning the institutions of my country,” she replied, with a touch of the old-time cheeriness. “We are not a restless people moving to and fro over the face of the earth and in subways seeking whom we may devour. Let me inform you, Mr. Richard Richard, that in the busy summer season we run both cars. If you were a woman you would not make the mistake of thinking them only one, for then you would have noticed that while each conductor is handsome, one is light and the other dark.”
“Like beer,” he joked.
“In these parts you should say, like port and champagne,” she corrected. “This is a wine country, and we are famous for our champagne. But don’t you think we should turn back? That is the last car down, and, as you suggest, I ought to keep within running distance of home. But I interrupted your beautiful speech. I’m sorry.”
She was quite pleased with herself. At first she feared that she might not be able to carry off her part of the conversation without showing suspicious excitement; but here she was actually joking! She was proud of her control, was this Miss Piddiwit!
Lamely at first and then, as he ceased to pick his words, with surer touch Richard proceeded with his “beautiful speech.” No smart retorts came to her aid; no retorts at all, indeed, for the man was sweeping her off her secured moorings—had she not spent half the night and the whole of the morning in steeling her will to oppose just this?—and he was driving her into a horrid state of weak nervousness. Richard Richard had studied frankness and soul analysis like a research student, and his speech carried with it an ozonic atmosphere of truth. Suddenly he came to an end.
Instead of crushing him with any of the carefully selected phrases which she had rehearsed in her morning tramp with “Count” she filled in the silence with a question that was almost a cry.
“How do you know it will last?”
“I don’t know it at all,” he replied with amazing frankness. “Every lover lies, of course, or is deceived, which amounts to the same thing. Affection usually does not last. The evidence of the world is before us; why not face it? How can I guarantee the future? I cannot. I know only my consuming faith that what has begun here so honestly and so free from taint is bound to have eternal meaning. Perhaps that is nature’s clever illusion; but I cannot believe it. It may not last, but what of that? Events are in the hands of the gods; yet what greater joy than staking all on the risks of life? Faith is the thing. And God knows I have faith—the faith that passeth understanding.”
She would have more specific reasons. He gave them to her. First, he talked!