steps.

At the corner he met Gerty's carriage and in response to her inviting
gesture, he gave an order to the coachman as he sprang inside.

"Well, this is a godsend," he observed with a grateful sigh while he
wrapped the fur rug carelessly about him. "A drive with a pretty woman
leaves a surface car a good many miles behind. And you are unusually
pretty this morning," he commented with a touch of daring gallantry.

"I ought to be," returned Gerty defiantly, "for heaven knows I take
trouble enough about it. Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!" she finished
gayly, "how is Laura?"

He met her question with his genial smile. "She makes a pretty good
pretence at happiness," he answered.

"And so she's really over head and ears in love?"

"Does it surprise you that she should find me charming?" he asked,
laughing.

She nodded with unshaken candour.

"I was never so much surprised in all my life."

If his smile was ready it did not fail to betray a touch of vanity that
was almost childlike.

"And yet there was a time when you yourself rather liked me," he
retorted with his intimate and penetrating glance.

"Was there?" She avoided his look though her tone was almost insolent,
"my dear fellow, I never in my life liked you better than I like you at
this minute--but we are speaking now of Laura's liking not of mine. Oh,
Arnold, Arnold, I am in a quake of fear."

"About Laura? Then get over it and don't be silly."

"And you are honestly and truly and terribly in earnest?"

"My dear girl, I'm going to marry her--isn't that enough? Does a man
commit suicide except when he's sincere?"

Her shallow cynicism had dropped from her now, and she turned toward him
with an unaffected anxiety in her face.

"Then it will last--it must."

"Last!" An expression of irritation showed in his eyes, and he shrugged
his shoulders with an impatient movement. "Of course it won't
last--nothing does. If you want the eternal you must seek it in
eternity."

"So in the end it will be like--all the others?"

Because the question annoyed him he responded to it with a frankness
that was almost brutal. "Everything is like everything else," he
returned, "there's nothing new, least of all in the emotions."

For a minute she looked at him in silence while the steady green flame
appeared to him to grow brighter in her eyes. Was it contempt or
curiosity that he saw in her face?

"Poor Laura!" she said at last very softly. "Poor happy Laura!"