Strange! Was she unhappy, she through whom life surged so richly? And yet was it not true, that where it gave much it exacted much? Feeling much, and understanding what she felt, and feeling for what she understood—must she also suffer much? Must one always pay?
He sighed, and began gathering together his papers. Thoughts about life tired him to-day.
On the steps he paused, unreasonably enough a little saddened as he watched some of them beginning a tennis game. Certainly they were losing no time—eager to let go thoughts about life for its pleasures, very few of them awake to that rich life he had tried to make them ready for. He drooped still more wearily at the thought that perhaps the most real gift he had for them was that unexpected ten minutes.
Remembering a book he must have from the library, he turned back. He went to the alcove where the works on philosophy were to be found, and was reaching up for the volume he wanted, when a sentence from a lowly murmured conversation in the next aisle came to him across the stack of books.
“That's all very well; we know, of course, that he doesn't believe, but what will he do when it comes to himself?”
It arrested him, coming as it did from one of the girls who had just left his class-room. He stood there motionless, his hand still reaching up for the book.
“Do? Why, face it, of course. Face it as squarely as he's faced every other fact of life.”
That was Gretta, and though, mindful of the library mandate for silence, her tone was low, it was vibrant with a fine scorn.
“Well,” said the first speaker, “I guess he'll have to face it before very long.”
That was not answered; there was a movement on the other side of the barricade of books—it might have been that Gretta had turned away. His hand dropped down from the high shelf. He was leaning against the books.