"Ah, any stick counts in the raft that keeps one floated. But as for my career, if I've an object, you mustn't think it a career. I don't bother much about my career. I'm a converted character, you see."
Felicia's face, on its background of sky and river, turned on him the look he loved--fond and mocking. He returned it, smiling, but gravely. "It is quite true. It's not that I care less for my ambitions, but differently. My goal has shifted, and everything is at once more simple and more complex; the aims are bigger and far simpler; the fight is bigger, too, but more complex than when the fight was personal. I shouldn't mind failure, really, or beginning over again. You converted me, you see."
"I?" said Felicia, with more sadness than surprise.
"Yes, you. Your courage, your sincerity, your faith, that wasn't the least blind but counted the costs and took the risk every time. Oh, don't protest; indeed, I hardly know how or why I felt it of you; merely my whole interpretation of things began to twirl on another axis. The idealistic philosophies of my college days came back to me--with all sorts of personal meanings in them. I began to trust life and its significance, since I trusted you so utterly."
"You almost terrify me," said Felicia; "would the world turn round the other way again if I proved horrid?"
"Oh, no, that is done with. If you proved horrid I would suffer, but the world would continue to turn in the right direction--despite your wrongness."
"Ah, that's a real conversion then." Felicia rose, laying down her work. She was touched, near tears. Standing beside him and looking down at him she said, "Shall I play to you?"
"Do," said Geoffrey, but taking her hand he held it for a moment, adding quietly, in almost a matter-of-fact voice, "Dear."
He had let go her hand as quietly when Angela was ushered in.
Angela and Felicia had not met since that night of the past spring, and the parting then made future meetings improbable.
Felicia had put Angela and Angela's meaning behind her, and had not doubted that Angela would acquiesce in mutual forgetfulness. It was astonishing and very disconcerting to see again this spectre rise, and rise, as always it seemed, in Geoffrey's presence.