And so her name was Opal! How curiously the name suited the voice! The Boy, as he listened, felt that no other name could possibly have matched that voice—the opal, that glorious gem in which all the fires of the sun, the iridescent glories of the rainbow, and the cold brilliance of ice and frost and snow seemed to blend and crystallize. All this, and more, was in that mysteriously fascinating voice.
"To live, Alice?" echoed the voice again. "To live? Why, to live is to feel!—to feel every emotion of which the human soul is capable, to rise to the heights of love, and knowledge, and power; to sink—if need be—to the deepest depths of despair, but, at all costs, at all hazards, to live!—to experience in one's own nature all the reality and fullness of the deathless emotions of life!"
The voice sank almost to the softness of a whisper, yet even then was vibrant, alive, intense.
"Ah, Alice, from my childhood up, I have dreamed of life and longed for it. What life really is, each must decide for himself, must he not? Some, they say, sleep their way through a dreamless existence, and never, never wake to realities. Alice, I have sometimes wondered if that was to be my fate, have wondered and wondered until I have cried out in real terror at the hideous prospect! Surely Fate could not be so cruel as to implant such a desperate desire in a soul that never was to know its fulfilment. Could it, Alice? Tell me, could it?"
The Boy held his breath now.
Who was this girl, anyhow, who seemed to express his own thoughts as accurately as he himself could have done? He was bored no longer. He was roused, stirred, awakened—and intensely interested. It was as though the voice of his own soul spoke to him in a dream.
The cold, lifeless voice now chimed in again. In his impatience the Boy clenched his fists and shut his teeth together hard. Why didn't she keep still? He didn't want to miss a single note he might have caught of the voice—that other! Why did this nonentity—for one didn't have to see her to be sure that she was that—have to interrupt and rob him of his pleasure?
"I don't understand you, Opal," she was saying. (Of course she didn't, thought the Boy—how could she?) "I am sure that I live. And yet I have never felt that way—thank goodness! It's vulgar to feel too deeply, Mamma used to say, and as I have grown older, I can see that she was right. The best people never show any excess of emotion. That is for tragedy queens, operatic stars, and—the women we do not talk about! Ladies cultivate repose!"
("Repose!—mon Dieu!" thought Paul, behind the hedge. He wished that she would!)
"And yet, Alice, you are—married!"