She had begun gaily, but she ended bitterly. Burton could not help realizing, as he watched her eyes, misty with deep feeling, and her flushed face, what an exceptional woman she would be in any assembly by the one gift of beauty, and yet he felt that she was one of the few women who would regard a reference to her beauty as a slur rather than a compliment. So he only answered, as lightly as possible:
"You are--yourself! And that is not an average, by any means. And as for the knowledge of life that you are inclined to treat so slightingly, any real knowledge is one of the precious things of earth, and what is more to be desired than true understanding of the most important thing the planet holds,--life? You surely know in your heart that you would not give up what you know for the most graceful ignorance that ever bloomed in some sheltered corner of a drawing-room! When your epitaph comes to be written, would you rather have it read. 'Here lies Leslie, beloved wife, et cetera, et cetera, whose horizon was bounded by the painted windows of her husband's colonial mansion, and who could make the most exquisite courtesy of any in her set'; or, 'She knew the real things of real life. She faced the troubles and the humiliations that come to the men and women who are building up the world of to-morrow out of today, and she helped to build courage and loyalty and love and good cheer into the work!'"
Leslie listened with held breath, then suddenly she dropped her folded arms upon the jangled keys and hid her face upon them. A tremor ran all through her slender body. Burton bit his lip as he looked at her. He wanted to put his hand out and touch her bowed head, to tell her how wonderful he thought her, to comfort her in some way. The impulse was an amazing one. It set every pulse in his body tingling. It astonished him so that he walked slowly away toward the window, wondering what had come over him, and how he was going to keep her from guessing that he was liable to attacks of losing his senses. But in a moment she lifted her head, with a long breath.
"Don't think me silly. I--believe I am too tired to be quite myself."
"We are all a little overwrought," said Burton, with great relief. That was probably what the trouble was!
"You have been so much more than kind that there is nothing for me to say about it," she added, rising. "I can't really imagine what I should have done if all this trouble had developed before you came. You have somehow made it seem possible to go through with it."
"Of course we will go through with it," he answered cheerily. "A year from now, you and Philip will be laughing at it." He said the words deliberately, to see how they sounded. They seemed to sound quite simple and natural.
"A year is a long way to guess," she said lightly. "You are going away to-morrow? Then I will say goodbye now."
"Let it be good night only," he said, and held out his hand steadily.
She touched it so carelessly with her own that the act seemed almost unconscious.