“Because if you are, I'll go too—if you will let me. I was up and dressed, and saw you from the window. Oh, isn't the sunrise beautiful?”
As in a dream he stood waiting for her, and together they passed through the gate out upon the grayish, stony road, which sloped gradually up the mountain. He had smiled and bowed, but was unable to formulate any suitable words of greeting. She was studying his face slowly, furtively, and with an anxiety she was trying to hide.
“You look a little paler than you did yesterday,” she said, hesitatingly. “Did you not sleep well?”
“I worked rather late last night,” was his evasive answer. “Night-work sometimes has a rather depressing effect on me.”
“I suppose so,” she answered, still studying his features, “and yet usually you are so full of happy spirits. Perhaps you”—she hesitated—“would rather be alone?”
“Oh, how could you say that?” he exclaimed. “It is just the contrary. I don't feel, however, that I have quite the right to intrude on you in your—your—”
“You needn't look at it that way,” she broke in, not yet fully convinced that she had fathomed his mood. “In fact, I want to see you. I want to tell you how much you have helped me. You have made me realize my error. I was depressing my mother and every one else by my gloomy hopelessness; but now—well, I seem to have absorbed some of your wonderful philosophy. I slept last night, as uncle would say, 'like a log,' and I feel much better this morning.”
“Peterson is coming; that is the cause,” Paul groaned inwardly, and he glanced away, that she might not read the thought in his eyes. To her he said, aimlessly: “I am glad—very, very glad. Hope is the only thing. Once one has it, all things become possible.”
“And you are so full of it,” she ran on, glibly. “I was speaking to my mother about you last night. She declared she did not think any one could come in contact with you and be despondent. She said it was a comfort just to watch the play of your features and hear the cheerful ring of your voice. Perhaps you don't realize, Paul, how God has blessed you. To go through life throwing out a radiance like yours is—well, it is next to—divinity.”
“Divinity, divinity!” The words seemed to slip from his lips incautiously. “There are philosophers, Ethel, who believe that God Himself suffers in His hampered effort to bring things up to His ideal, and that, as parts of Him, we, too, must suffer as long as He suffers. It may be that the more we partake of His essence the more we have to bear. Who knows? The person who can bury himself in the stirring affairs of earth has a bliss which, if due to ignorance, is nevertheless bliss.”