Why not? Because you're quiet? Good gracious! Don't you know that
you're the most impressive sort? We chatterers spend all our time
playing to you quiet people."

"Yes; we're only the audience."

"'Only!'" she echoed. "Why, we live for you, and we can't live without
you."

"I wish you couldn't," said Russell. "That would be a new experience for
both of us, wouldn't it?"

"It might be a rather bleak one for me," she answered, lightly. "I'm
afraid I'll miss these summer evenings with you when they're over. I'll
miss them enough, thanks!"

"Do they have to be over some time?" he asked.

"Oh, everything's over some time, isn't it?"

Russell laughed at her. "Don't let's look so far ahead as that," he
said. "We don't need to be already thinking of the cemetery, do we?"

"I didn't," she said, shaking her head. "Our summer evenings will be
over before then, Mr. Russell."

"Why?" he asked.

"Good heavens!" she said. "THERE'S laconic eloquence: almost a proposal
in a single word! Never mind, I shan't hold you to it. But to answer
you: well, I'm always looking ahead, and somehow I usually see about how
things are coming out."

"Yes," he said. "I suppose most of us do; at least it seems as if we
did, because we so seldom feel surprised by the way they do come out.
But maybe that's only because life isn't like a play in a theatre, and
most things come about so gradually we get used to them."

"No, I'm sure I can see quite a long way ahead," she insisted, gravely.
"And it doesn't seem to me as if our summer evenings could last very
long. Something'll interfere--somebody will, I mean--they'll SAY
something----"

"What if they do?"

She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive shiver. "It'll change
you," she said. "I'm just sure something spiteful's going to happen to
me. You'll feel differently about--things."

"Now, isn't that an idea!" he exclaimed.

"It will," she insisted. "I know something spiteful's going to happen!"

"You seem possessed by a notion not a bit flattering to me," he
remarked.

"Oh, but isn't it? That's just what it is! Why isn't it?"

"Because it implies that I'm made of such soft material the slightest
breeze will mess me all up. I'm not so like that as I evidently appear;
and if it's true that we're afraid other people will do the things we'd
be most likely to do ourselves, it seems to me that I ought to be the
one to be afraid. I ought to be afraid that somebody may say something
a