“Yes. But, after all, that’s only the outside of the cup and platter. It’s the soul inside the shell that matters.”
“Well, I should think Cara has a beautiful soul, too,” replied Ann loyally.
“Probably you know her better than I do,” he said indifferently. Then, as though to change the subject: “What book have you been reading?” He picked it up from her lap, where it lay face downward, open at the lyric which had been occupying her thoughts when he joined her. “Oh, verse?”
“I felt too lazy to begin a novel,” she explained.
His eyes travelled down the brief lines of the little song she had been reading, his face hardening as he read.
“Charmingly optimistic,” he observed ironically, as he closed the book. “I’m afraid, however, that the ‘garden of happy hours’ is a purely imaginary one for most of us.”
“Of course it’s bound to be—if you don’t believe in it. You’ve got to have dream-flowers first, or naturally they can’t materialise.”
“I suppose all of us have had our dream-flowers at one time or another,” he replied quietly. “And then the frost has come along and scotched them. But I forgot!”—with a short laugh. “You’re one of the people who believe that if you think and believe them hard enough, your dreams will come true, aren’t you? I remember your flinging that bit of philosophy in my face the first time we met—at the Kursaal.”
“Yes,” she acquiesced. “But if you haven’t any, they can’t come true, can they?”
“I don’t imagine that what we hope or think makes any perceptible difference,” he said shortly.