And to that, too, no denial came from the idealist of continual hope, who yet saw the eternal roads running.
Betty, because she, too, saw their running, said finally:
'I suppose, really, one stays pretty much the same sort of person to the end.... And that's all right, as long as one doesn't run up against other sorts; it hurts to do that'—at the pain of that clash of codes her brows knit—'and that's why we won't try m-mixing the sorts; it wouldn't be what you call fair, on either sort.'
Prudence heard the finality in that: it found its echo in her soul; but still she pleaded Warren's cause (he cared so much) with:
'But if both cared to.... Oh, that isn't quite all there is to it, I know—I'm not a fool who can only see one thing—but it's a thing that should count a great deal. Of all the many, many things, I believe that's the one that, perhaps, in the end counts most.'
Betty admitted it.
'More than any one other; but not more than all the others together. You see, there are rather many, and it wouldn't do. It wouldn't w-work, you know it wouldn't; and—and it would hurt rather.... Oh, it wouldn't do.'
She clenched her lip again between her teeth, perhaps to steady it.
Prudence thought it all over, admitting it true, before saying, with a quick tremor in her own voice:
'But, perhaps, sometime—afterwards....'