"You have not a robust physique,"--he went on--"Yet you are more full
of the spirit of life than men and women twice as strong as you are.
You are a feminine thing, too,--and that goes against you. But one can
see in you a worker--you evidently enjoy the exercise of the
accomplishments you possess--and nothing comes amiss to you. I wonder
how you manage it? When you joined us on this trip a few days ago, you
brought a kind of atmosphere with you that was almost buoyant, and now
I am disappointed, because you seem to have enclosed yourself within
it, and to have left us out!"
"Have you not left yourselves out?" I queried, gently. "I, personally,
have really nothing to do with it. Just remember that when we have
talked on any subject above the line of the general and commonplace
your sole object has been to 'draw' me for the amusement of yourself
and Dr. Brayle--"
"Ah, you saw that, did you?" he interrupted, with a faint smile.
"Naturally! Had you believed half you say you were told of me, you
would have known I must have seen it. Can you wonder that I refuse to
be 'drawn'?"
He looked at me with an odd expression of mingled surprise and
annoyance, and I met his gaze fully and frankly. His eyes shifted
uneasily away from mine.
"One may feel a pardonable curiosity," he said, "And a desire to know--"
"To know what?" I asked, with some warmth--"How can you obtain what you
are secretly craving for, if you persist in denying what is true? You
are afraid of death--yet you invite it by ignoring the source of life!
The curtain is down,--you are outside eternal realities altogether in a
chaos of your own voluntary creation!"