"I'll soon tell you. You won't laugh at me?"
"Laugh! Oh, my darling!"
"Well, then, the fact that it is you, your own dear self, that I so glory in, and not any mere abstract mental condition, is proved by this. I confess I always hoped the time would come when I should be genuinely in love. That's what you are not to laugh at, by the way! I knew somehow that I had all the capacity for intense devotion, and naturally enough, I suppose, longed to exercise it. So if practically any young and attractive woman would have served as the sort of figure-head you describe, should I have been forced to wait—unwillingly enough, I can tell you—until you, my only possible beloved, appeared upon the scene? Of course not."
"You had to wait for me—for me—for me!" sang Evarne, keeping the time in her little song of triumph by clapping her hands.
"It is very wicked of you to be so pleased about it. Why did you not come along earlier, my blessing? It is a perfect misery, nothing else, to be empty-hearted. It is terrible to feel a thousand emotions seeking desperately for an outlet. Why did your star linger so long in crossing mine?"
But no sympathy was to be extracted from Evarne.
"It has all been just as is best. You have been most fortunate," she declared. "Love is not the be-all and end-all of any life, you know, and when you think of your chosen work—which is the real thing—I'm sure you can't regret any emotional experiences, however distressing they may have been in the learning. They are all needful training for the production of soul-stirring pictures; as necessary, in their way, as is the enchantment of loving and being loved that is now going to help you still further. Mental turmoil of every type bears its own special fruit that may be garnered by an artist to his own advantage. Stagnation, ignorance and lack of variety in emotions brings ultimate failure in imaginative work. Thus speaks Diotima the Second."
Far-away, curious echoes seemed ringing in Evarne's brain. When and where and in what familiar voice had she heard such sentiments spoken long, long ago?
"Well, it certainly is consoling to put all one's mental worries into the same category as freehand drawing and perspective," declared Geoff; and being both ardently happy and therefore easily amused, they laughed merrily.
After a moment's pause he went on—