off--and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her
far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future
would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there
in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to
recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy's
lake-front.

On Lansing's side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with
the large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree
of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the
four currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had
not gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the
fourth had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of
his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of
beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout
little craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he
had made some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had
sought out through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing
girl in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of
her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good
faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise
into the unknown.

It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit
to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see
her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation,
his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew
on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how
miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people's moods and
whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they
liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his
promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become
a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were
dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his
resources were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused
him hugely now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world
of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had
kept their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,
the contact with new scenes and st