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