ables in
boulevards; isn't it difficult to realize that they exist? and Arabs on
camels crossing deserts; they are quite imaginable; and nuns praying in
convent cells; and stokers, all stripped and sweating, under the engines
of great steamers; and a little Japanese artist carving so carefully the
soles of the feet of some tiny image; there they are, all going on; as
real to themselves as we are, at the very moment that we sit here and
feel that only we, in all the world, are real." She might almost have
been confiding her fancies to a husband whose sympathy had been tested
by years of fond companionship.

Gregory, wondering at her, loving her, pulled at the short turf as he
lay, propped on an elbow, beside her, and said: "What nice thoughts you
have."

"You have them, too, I think," said Karen, smiling down at him. "And
nicer ones. Mine are usually only amusing, like those; but yours are
often beautiful. I see that in your face, you know. It is a face that
makes me think always of a cold, clear, steely pool;--that is what it
looks like if one does not look down into it but only across it, as it
were; but if one bends over and looks down, deep down, one sees the sky
and passing white clouds and boughs of trees. I saw deep down at once.
That is why," her eyes rested upon him, "we were friends from the
first."

"It's what you bring that you see," said Gregory; "you make me think of
all those things."

"Ah, but you think them for yourself, too; when you are alone you think
them."

"But when I am alone and think them, without you in the thought of them,
it's always with sadness, for something I've lost. You bring them back,
with happiness. The thought of you is always happy. I have never known
anyone who seemed to me so peacefully happy as you do. You are very
happy, aren't you?" Gregory looked down at his little tufts of turf as
he asked this question.

"I am glad I seem to you like that," said Karen. "I think I am usually
quiet and gay and full of confidence; I sometimes wonder at my
confidence. But it is not always so. No, I am not always happy.
Sometimes, when I think and remember, it is like feeling a great hole
being dug in my heart--as if the iron went down and turned up dark
forgotten things. I have that feeling sometimes; and then I wonder that
I can ever be happy."

"What things, dear Karen?"

"You know, I think." Karen looked out at the sea. "Tante's face when I
found her husband's body. And my father