“I have never thought about it,” she answered. “All seasons have beauty for me, and I have never suffered very much by either the cold or the heat. I think I have been more interested in other things.”
He looked at her intently.
“What other things?”
She hesitated. A faint colour stole over her cheeks.
“Well,—I hardly know how to express it—things of life and death. I have always been rather a suppressed sort of creature—with all my aims and wishes pent up,—pressed into a bottle, as it were, and corked tight!” She laughed, and went on. “Perhaps if the cork were drawn there might be an explosion! But, wrongly or rightly, I have judged myself as an atom of significance made insignificant by circumstances and environment, and I have longed to make my ‘significance,’ however small, distinct and clear, even though it were only a pin’s point of meaning. If I said this to ordinary people, they would probably exclaim ‘How dull!’ and laugh at me for such an idea——”
“Of course!—dull people would laugh,” agreed Dimitrius. “People in the aggregate laugh at most things, except lack of money. That makes them cry—if not outwardly, then inwardly. But I do not laugh,—for if you can forget heat and cold and rough weather in the dream of seeking to discover your own significance and meaning in a universe where truly nothing exists without its set place and purpose, you are a woman of originality as well as intelligence. But that much of you I have already discovered.”
She glanced at him brightly.
“You are very kind!”
“Now do you mean that seriously or ironically?” he queried, with a slight smile. “I am not really ‘very kind’—I consider myself very cruel to have kept you chained for more than a month to rolls of vellum inscribed with crabbed old Latin characters, illegible enough to bewilder the strongest eyes. But you have done exceedingly well,—and we have all three had time to know each other and to like each other, so that a harmony between us is established. Yes—you have done more than exceedingly well——”
“I am glad you are pleased,” said Diana, simply, resting one hand on her embroidery frame and looking at him with somewhat tired, anxious eyes. “I was rather hoping to see you this evening, though it is, as you say, after working hours, for I wanted very much to tell you that the manuscript I am now deciphering seems to call for your own particular attention. I should prefer your reading it with me before I go further.”