"Perhaps you were a pillar of modesty, too," she commented, "once."
He laughed--a gentle, lazy laugh in which she joined--and presently she added:
"Of course, I know you did those things. That is just it. You could do anything, and be anything, if you only would. Oh, but you don't seem to care! You seem satisfied, comfortable and good-naturedly indifferent; if you were poor, I should say idle--I suppose the trouble is there. You have never been poor and lonely and learned to want things. So, of course, you never learned to care for--for anything."
Her companion leaned toward her--his handsome face full of a light that was not all of the fire.
The girl's face lighted, too. Her eyes seemed to look into some golden land which she was not quite willing to enter.
"No," she demurred gently. "I am not sure of that. Let us forget about that. As you say, a half-year has been a long time--to a child. I had just come from abroad then with my parents, and I had been most of the time in a school where girls are just children, no matter what their ages. When we came home, I suppose I did not know just what to do with my freedom. And then, you see, Father and Mother liked you, and let you come to the house, and when I first saw you and knew you--when I got to know you, I mean--I was glad to have you come, too. Then we rode and drove and golfed all those days about Lenox--all those days--your memory is poor, very poor, but you may recall those October days, last year, when I had just come home--those days, you know----"
Again the girl's eyes were looking far into a fair land which queens have willingly died to enter, while the young man had pulled his chair close, as one eager to lead her across the border.
"No," she went on--speaking more to herself than to him, "I am older, now--ages older, and trying to grow wise, and to see things as they are. Riding, driving and golfing are not all of life. Life is serious--a sort of battle, in which one must either lead or follow or merely look on. You were not made to follow, and I could not bear to have you look on. I always thought of you as a leader. During those days at Lenox you seemed to me a sort of king, or something like that, at play. You see I was just a schoolgirl with ideals, keeping the shield of Launcelot bright. I had idealized him so long--the one I should meet some day. It was all very foolish, but I had pictured him as a paladin in armor, who would have diversions, too, but who would lay them aside to go forth and redress wrong. You see what a silly child I was, and how necessary it was for me to change when I found that I had been dreaming, that the one I had met never expected to conquer or do battle for a cause--that the diversions were the end and sum of his desire, with maybe a little love-making as a part of it all."