"Wouldn't this be good for always!" he murmured.
He was touched with sentimental self-pity at the thought of leaving all this,—the beauty, the wonder, the joy of Europe! In another short month instead of these golden hours of full sensation there would be Chicago, whose harsh picture a three years' absence had not softened.
"I don't know," the girl replied, with a long sigh for remembered joy. "One could not be as happy as this for months and years."
"I'd like to try!" he said lightly.
"No! Not you!" she retorted with sudden warmth. "What could a man do here?"
"There are a lot of fellows in Europe who manage to answer that question somehow. Most of the men I knew in Paris don't expect to go back yet, and not to Chicago anyway."
Her lips compressed quickly. Evidently they were not the kind of men she thought well of.
"Why!" she stammered, words crowding tempestuously to her tongue. "How could you stay, and not work out your own life, not make your own place in the world like uncle Powers? How it would trouble him to hear you say that!"
She made him a trifle ashamed of his desire to keep out of the fight any longer. Hers, he judged, was a militant, ambitious nature, and he was quick to feel what she expected of him.
After they had sat there a long time without speaking, she said gently, as if she wished to be just to him:—