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o. I suppose all great happiness is a little sad. Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses--" "Beauty means the agony of sacrifice and the end of agony...." "And, Amory, we're beautiful, I know. I'm sure God loves us--" "He loves you. You're his most precious possession." "I'm not his, I'm yours. Amory, I belong to you. For the first time I regret all the other kisses; now I know how much a kiss can mean." Then they would smoke and he would tell her about his day at the office--and where they might live. Sometimes, when he was particularly loquacious, she went to sleep in his arms, but he loved that Rosalind--all Rosalinds--as he had never in the world loved any one else. Intangibly fleeting, unrememberable hours. ***** AQUATIC INCIDENT One day Amory and Howard Gillespie meeting by accident down-town took lunch together, and Amory heard a story that delighted him. Gillespie after several cocktails was in a talkative mood; he began by telling Amory that he was sure Rosalind was slightly eccentric. He had gone with her on a swimming party up in Westchester County, and some one mentioned that Annette Kellerman had been there one day on a visit and had dived from the top of a rickety, thirty-foot summer-house. Immediately Rosalind insisted that Howard should climb up with her to see what it looked like. A minute later, as he sat and dangled his feet on the edge, a form shot by him; Rosalind, her arms spread in a beautiful swan dive, had sailed through the air into the clear water. "Of course _I_ had to go, after that--and I nearly killed myself. I thought I was pretty good to even try it. Nobody else in the party tried it. Well, afterward Rosalind had the nerve to ask me why I stooped over when I dove. 'It didn't make it any easier,' she said, 'it just took all the courage out of it.' I ask you, what can a man do with a girl like that? Unnecessary, I call it." Gillespie failed to understand why Amory was smiling delightedly all through lunch. He thought perhaps he was one of these hollow optimists. ***** FIVE WEEKS LATER Again the library of the Connage house. ROSALIND is alone, sitting on the lounge staring very moodily and unhappily at nothing. She has changed perceptibly--she is a trifle thinner for one thing; the light in her eyes is not so bright; she looks easily a year older. Her mother comes in, muffled in an opera-cloak. She takes in ROSALIN
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