The young man's answer was an instant's impassioned silence. Too close it touched him, that vital image of the Garden. Then, with an effect of sternness, he said,—
“Have we the right to do as we please? Have we the courage that comes of right to cut ourselves off from all those calls and cries for help?”
“I have,” said the girl; “I have just that right—of one who knows exactly what she wants, and is going to get it if she can!”
He laughed at her happy insolence, with which all the youth and nature in him made common cause.
“I shouldn't mind thinking about your Poor Man,” she tripped along, “if he liked being poor, or if it seemed to improve him any; or if it were only now and then. But there is so dreadfully much of him! Once we begin, how should we ever think about anything else? He'd rise up and sit down with us, and eat and drink with us, and tell us what to wear. Every pleasure of our lives would be spoiled with his eternal 'Where do I come in?' It was simple enough in that garden, with only those two and nobody outside to feel injured. But we are those two, aren't we? Isn't everybody—once in a life, and once only?” She turned her face aside, slighting by her manner the excessive meaning of her words. “I ask for myself only what I think I have a right to give you—my absolute undivided attention for those first few years. They say it never lasts!” she hastened to add with playful cynicism.
Young Bogardus seemed incapable under the circumstances of any adequate reply. Free as they were in words, there was an extreme personal shyness between these proud young persons, undeveloped on the side of passion and better versed in theories of life than in life itself. They had separated the day after their sudden engagement, and their nearest approaches to intimacy had been through letters. Naturally the girl was the bolder, having less in herself to fear.
“That is what I call being simple,” she went on briskly. “If you think we can be that in New York, let us live there. I could be simple there, but not with you, sir! That terrible East Side would be shaking its gory locks at us. We should feel that we did it—or you would! Then good-by to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!”
“You are my life, liberty, and happiness, and I will be your almoner,” said Paul, “and dispense you”—
“Dispense with me!” laughed the girl. “And what shall I be doing while you are dispensing me on the East Side? New York has other sides. While you go slumming with the Seraph, I shall be talking to the Snake! Now, do laugh!” she entreated childishly, turning her sparkling face to his.
“Am I expected to laugh at that?”