"Well, at least this has substance. It isn't empty."
"Isn't it?" he asked. "Do you know, I should just have reversed that
opinion. I should have said there was a good deal more in the life
you've deserted this winter than in the life you're choosing to live
here!"
She laughed. "Perhaps I've reverted! Or perhaps we are in different
phases of evolution! You have reached your--we'll call it your New
York--and I have passed through it and come on to something better. Or
if that sounds impolite we'll say that I have reached it and tumbled
down again!"
"Oh, there's no impoliteness in the truth! You are generations,
infinite ages, ahead of me!"
She made no answer to his humility, and for a while neither spoke
again. Their talk was, of necessity, largely broken by intervals when
all their attention was needed for the task in hand. The light snow
made the going uncertain; they were taking the shorter way home, along
the upper slopes, instead of crossing the valley, and they had, more or
less, alternately to feel their way and to rush swiftly on across
possible dangers.
At the crest of the last slope Rosamund paused, and they turned to look
back at the way they had come. Flood watched her with eyes of
devotion, as she stood there with her head thrown a little upwards,
breathing deeply, her face warm with her delight in the beauty of the
scene before her.
"How lovely it is!" she said, in the vibrating tone that always
thrilled him.
"Yes, it is lovely," he said, "but only for a time. It is too much
like the real thing!"
"Isn't it the real thing?" she asked, surprised.
He laughed, and shook himself a little. "I mean the real thing that I
used to know, the drifts on the plains, sleet in the face, the numbness
in your feet that tells you they're frozen--that's the real thing!
Believe me!"