“We get along pretty well,” said Anthony happily.
“Don’t we.”
Horatia never thought that Anthony might be making love to her. Love to her was already couched in different terms. She liked his phrasing and she liked him. He was such a human companion and they were alone before such vastnesses that she found herself responding to the touch of his shoulder. They were leaning back in the roadster, shoulders touching lightly.
“Life’s queer, Anthony. When we expect to be happy we aren’t and when you don’t expect it, it comes.”
“We don’t know when to expect it,” answered Anthony sagely.
He talked well that night and from that night on as she thought of her future Horatia began to compare and contrast Anthony’s plan of life. On this ride he left out most of his vehement, laughable sociology, and talked of business. He had been fascinated, startled by the vast machinery of moving grain across the world. The great scale on which it was done thrilled him. “Feeding the world,” he said, with no great humanitarian feeling but as if the magnificence of the act had gripped his imagination. He was going to take charge of part of the business after he had seen the eastern end of it.
“I thought you wanted to travel before you began work.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a man—a mature man soon—and a mature man must have a job.”
Self-absorbed Horatia, who did not guess from those words of what else he was thinking! But she did not trouble about Anthony much. She generalized Anthony.
“Yes—we—all men and women must work.”