“I am Providence's favorite bag-holder,” was his bitter thought. “The game is never for me.”
“Good-bye,” said Lily.
“Good-bye,” said Maurice.
“Are you coming into the casino to-night?”
“If you will be there.”
“I have promised a lot of dances. Good-bye. Go back and work.”
“Yes, I must work,” said Maurice.
She gave him a defiant, radiant smile, and ran towards the Indian on the trail. He turned in the opposite direction, and tramped the woods until nightfall.
At first he mocked himself. “Oh yes, she loves me! I'm glad, at any rate, that she loves me! There will be enough to moisten my lips with; and if I thirst for an ocean that is not her fault.”
Why had a woman been made who could inspire such passion without returning it? He reminded himself that she was of a later, a gayer, lighter, less strenuous generation than his own. Thousands of men had waded blood for a principle and a lost cause in his day. In hers the gigantic republic stood up a menace to nations. The struggle for existence was over before she was born. Yet women seemed more in earnest now than ever before. He said to himself, “I have always picked out natures as fatal to me as a death-warrant, and fastened my life to them.”