object and to stake one's happiness on the
accident of events--did these things constitute living for such as she?

"When you say 'life' do you not mean action?" he asked slowly.

"Oh, I want to be, to know, to feel," she replied almost impatiently. "I
want to go through everything, to turn every page, to experience all
that can be experienced upon the earth."

A smile was in his eyes as he shook his head. "And when you have
accomplished all these interesting things," he said, "you will have
gained from them--what? The lesson, learned perhaps in great sorrow,
that the outward events in life are of no greater significance than the
falling of the rain on the growing corn. Nothing that can happen or that
cannot happen to one matters very much in the history of one's
experience, and the biggest incident that ever came since the beginning
of the world never brought happiness in itself alone. It may be," he
added, with a tenderness which he made no effort to keep from his voice,
"that you will arrive finally at the knowledge that all life is
forfeiture in one way or another, and that the biggest thing in it is
sometimes to go without."

His tone was not sad--the cheerful sound of it was what impressed her
most, and when she looked up at him she was almost surprised by the
smiling earnestness in his face.

"Do you mean that this is what you have learned?" she asked.

Her seriousness sent him off into his pleasant laugh. "Whatever I have
learned it has not been ingratitude for a meeting like this," he
responded gayly. "It is one of my unexpected joys."

"And yet it's a joy that you take small advantage of," she remarked.
"I'm almost always at home and I'm very often wishing that you would
come. As a last test, will you dine with me to-morrow night?"

While she spoke, for the briefest flicker of her eyelashes, she saw him
hesitate; then he shook his head.

"I fear I can't," he replied regretfully, "the nurse goes home, you see,
and there's no one left with Connie. When she's well again I'll come
gladly if you'll let me."

Her face flushed a little. "I'm sorry I asked you," she said; "I ought
to have thought--to have known."

He felt the wrench within him as if he had torn out a living nerve, for
it was the end between them and he had meant that it should be so. Life
would have no compromises with illusions, he knew--not even with the
last and the most beautiful of desires.

"On the other hand your wish made me ver