"It doesn't seem to mean anything to you,--that thing--I told you."
"Everything you tell me means more than anything else in the world."
"But about Tom Fulton. I was not married to him. I lied about it. It
isn't possible that I seem--the same--to you."
"You would always seem the same to me," he answered,--and she found
herself smiling at the beauty of his voice. "How could you be different?
These things are just things that happen to you. Should I like you less
if you were caught in the rain, or got your pretty dress muddy?"
"How do you know it is a pretty dress?" she asked irrepressibly.
"Because it's your dress. Run home, now, and brush your hair."
She went at once, and, in spite of her doubts, light-heartedly. He made
her feel, as the night did, that here in this present life, as in the
outer universe, are great spaces still unexplored. Everything had
possibilities. Sprinkle new pollen on a flower and its fruit would take
on other forms. Stretch out a hand and you might be led into unguessed
delights, even after you were dulled with pain. Sleeping in the air,
even, were forces to nourish and revive, dormant only because we do not
call upon them. She smiled into the night, and her heart called
believingly.