"Is there a moral in that?" questioned Philip, smiling at Sarah.
"Perhaps so."
A fortnight before, how assured would have been her reply! How gloomy her recognition of the analogy! Changed as was her mood, a shade fell over her countenance. Was it of apprehension, and did Philip thus interpret it?
"I could not love life and this fair world as I do, if I conceded this to be universally true," he said. "That there comes, sometimes, a glory to the present, besides which the hues of past and future fade and are forgotten, I must and will believe. Such, it seems to me, must be the rapture of reciprocal and acknowledged affection; the joy of reunion after long separation from the beloved one; the bliss of reconciliation after estrangement. Have you ever thought how much happier we would be if we were to live only in the Now we have, and never strain our eyes with searching for, the lights and shades of what may be before us, or with 'mournful looking' after what is gone?"
"Yet is this possible?" asked Sarah, earnestly. "Does not the very constitution of our natures forbid it? To me that would be a miserably tame, dead-level existence over which Hope sheds no enchanting illusions; like this river, as we saw it three days ago, cold and sombre as the rain-clouds that hung above it. Oh, no! give me anything but the chill, neutral tint of such a life as thousands are content to lead—people who expect nothing, fear nothing—I had almost said, feel nothing!"
"That is because every principle of your being is at war with common-places. Tell me frankly, Miss Sarah, did you ever meet another woman who had as much character as yourself?"
"I do not know that I understand the full bearing of your question." She leaned on the side of the boat, her hand playing in the water, her lips working in an irresolute timidity that was oddly at variance with their habitual firmness.
"I am aware," she began slowly and gravely, "that I express myself too strongly at times; that I am more abrupt in language and action than most other girls. I have always been told so; but it is natural to me. My character has many rough and sharp edges that need softening and rounding"—
"In order to render you one of the pretty automatons, the well-draped, thoroughly-oiled pieces of human clockwork that decorates men's homes—falsely so called—in these days of gloss and humbug!" interrupted Philip with energy. "I am sick to death of the dollish 'sweet creatures' every boarding-school turns out by the score. I understand all the wires that work the dear puppets—flatter myself that I can put them through their paces (excuse the slang!) in as short a time as any other man of my age in the country. The delightful divinities! A little music, and a little less French; a skimming of the arts and sciences; and it is a rare thing to meet one who can tell an art from a science ten days after she has graduated—a stock of pet phrases—all hyperbolical, consequently unmeaning—a glib utterance of the same; a steady devotion to balls, beau-catching, gossip, and fancy-work; voila the modern fine lady—the stuff we are expected to make wives of! Wives! save the mark! I never think of the possibility of being thus ensnared without an involuntary repetition of a portion of the Litany—'From all such, etc., etc.!'"
He plied his oars with renewed activity for a moment, then suspended them to continue, in a softer tone: "And this is the representative woman of your Utopia, Miss Sarah?"