"I mean it!" she broke in desperately.
"Good joke!" he cried again, laughing. "You don't want to live any more! Twenty years old and every line of your graceful, young form quivering with the joy of life—you—you don't want to live! That's great!"
The girl lifted her dimmed eyes, looked at him a moment, and spoke the thought that had poisoned her soul—spoke it in hard, bitter accents with a touch of self-loathing:
"I've just learned that my birth is shadowed by disgrace!"
"Well, what have you to do with that?" he asked quickly. "Your whole being shines with truth and purity. What's an accident of birth? You couldn't choose your parents, could you? You're a nameless orphan and my father is the attorney of an old fool guardian who lives somewhere in Europe. All right! The worst thing your worst enemy could say is that you're a child of love—a great love that leaped all bounds and defied the law—a love that was madness and staked all life on the issue! That means you're a child of the gods. Some of the greatest men and women of the world were born like that. Your own eyes are clear. There's no cloud on your beautiful soul——"
Tom paused and Helen lifted her face in rapt attention. The boy suddenly leaped to his feet, turned away and spoke in ecstatic whispers:
"Good Lord—listen at me—why—I'm making love—great Scott—I'm in love! The big thing has happened—to me—to me! I feel the thrill of it—the thing that transforms the world—why—it's like getting religion!"
He strode back and forth in a frenzy of absurd happiness.
Helen, smiling through her tears, asked:
"What are you saying? What are you talking about?"