“Ah—perhaps they’re just simple folk who believe in their own experiences.”
He had the troubled feeling that her intuitions, her fatalistic leanings, were giving her a surer grasp of the subject than his, which was based upon a rather nebulous, logical process that often brought him to confusion.
“I only know that I am free,” he declared doggedly.
The sun had warmed her to an almost vagrant mood. Her smile was delicate enough, yet her eyes held a gentle taunt as she responded: “Not a bit of it; you have a wife.”
“A wife—yes; and that gives me ten times the freedom I ever had before. A man is like a bird with only one wing—before he finds a wife. His wife becomes his other wing. There isn’t any height beyond him, when he has a wife.”
She placed her hands on her cheeks. “Two wings!” she mused.... “What’s between the wings?”
“A heart, you may say, if you will. Or a soul. A capacity. Words are fashioned by scholars—dull fellows. But you know what I mean.”
From the hidden depths of the cuartel a silver bugle-note sounded, and Sylvia looked to see if the soldiers sitting out in front would go away; but they did not do so. She arose. “Would you mind going into the church a minute?” she asked.
“No; but why?”
“Oh, anybody can go into those churches,” she responded.