"I
think this is one of them."
Again the arms beneath the girl's head shifted unconsciously.
"Others judge us after we do decide, though," she objected.
"What they think doesn't count. We're good or bad, as we're honest with
ourselves or not."
"You think that, really?"
"I know it, Bess. There's no room for doubt."
Silence fell, and in it the girl's mind wandered on and on. At last,
abrupt as before, abstractedly as before, came a new thought, a new
query.
"Is happiness, after all, the chief end of life, How?" she questioned.
"Happiness, Bess?" He halted. "Happiness?" repeated; but there was no
irony in the voice, only, had the girl noticed, a terrible mute pain.
"How should I know what is best in life, I, who have never known life at
all?"
Blind in her own abstraction, the girl had not read beneath the words
themselves, did not notice the thinly veiled inference.
"But you must have an idea," she pressed. "Tell me."
This time the answer was not concealed. It stood forth glaring, where
the running might read.
"Yes, I have an idea--and more," he said. "Happiness, your happiness,
has always been the first thing in my life."
Again silence walled them in, a longer silence than before. Step by
step, gropingly, the girl was advancing on her journey. Step by step she
was drawing away from her companion; yet though, wide-eyed, he watched
her every motion, felt the distance separating grow wider and wider, he
made no move to prevent, threw no obstacle in her path.
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