“Fine!” he laughed.
“I believe you planned to have her ask you.”
If you had told Richard that he had planned to forge a cheque he would have considered the matter with an open mind and have rendered an impartial decision.
“Quite possibly,” he admitted, “although I am not at all conscious of doing it. I thought I had intended to visit a good friend in Montclair. In fact, I wrote to him yesterday; but all the same I may have been planning to go with you. I want to go with you. That’s a very important clue. Trust your desires every time; they tell which way the mental wind blows.”
“What could be your motive, then——” she began.
He interrupted. “Motive? I have no motives, no conscious ones. I don’t know why I do things. That’s what makes me such an interesting phenomenon to myself. I unfold like a plant; and it’s very exciting—I am always eager to know whether I’m going to blossom into a sunflower or an apple tree or a wild strawberry bloom.”
“Or poison ivy,” she interrupted.
“Quite so!” he agreed heartily. “Motive? I’ve long ago given up trying to discover my motive for anything. And, by the way, we’re usually wrong when we do discover. Listen to the bragging of folks around you, to their cock-sureness in knowing why they do this and that. Sometimes the holiest of men have the unholiest of motives, and many a rascal would be surprised to know how really Christian he has been acting. It is the same with nations and elephants and earthworms. Life will have its way whether we understand it or not. All that I know about myself just now is that I very much desire to go to your Penn Ying——”
“Penn Yan, please,” she corrected.
“You don’t know how curious I am,” he looked at her frankly, “to see what will happen next.”