afternoon. One
longed to hold it back even though one knew that it led to something
more lovely still.

"Are you happy?" she asked, and wondered if he would kiss her again when
they parted as he had kissed her yesterday in the dusk of the hall?

"Yes, and no." He drew nearer to her. "I am happy now like this--here
with you--but at other times I am troubled. I can't see my way clearly."

"But why should you? Why should any one be troubled when it is so easy
to be happy?"

"Easy?" He laughed. "If life were only as simple as that!"

"It is if one knows what one wants."

"Well, one may know what one wants, and yet not know if one is wise in
wanting it."

"Oh, wise!" She shook her head with an impatient movement. "Isn't the
only wisdom to be happy and kind?"

He looked at her thoughtfully, while a frown drew his straight dark
eyebrows together. "If you wanted a thing with all your heart, and yet
were not sure--"

Her impatience answered him. "I couldn't want it with all my heart
without being sure."

"Sure I mean that it is best--best for every one--not just for
oneself--"

Her laugh was like a song. "Do you suppose there has ever been anything
since the world began that was best for every one? If I knew what I
wanted I shouldn't ask anything more. I would spread my wings and fly to
it."

He smiled. "You are so much like your father at times--even in the
things that you say. Yes, I suppose you would fly to it because you have
been trained that way--to be direct and daring. But I am made
differently. Life has taught me; it is in my blood and bone to stop and
question, to look so long that at last I lose the will to choose, or to
leap. There are some of us like that, you know."

"Perhaps," she smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to
be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable
fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always
through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight
onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for
what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before it eluded her.
Yet she knew that fighting would not do any good. She could do nothing
while her happiness hung on a thread. She could do nothing but fold her
hands and wait, though her heart burned hot with the injustice of it,
and she longed to speak aloud all the words that were rising to her
tightly closed lips.

"Oh, don'