“There’s so much we’re only beginning to understand now, both on your
side and on mine.”
“When it’s almost too late—if it isn’t quite.”
Her manner, her voice, both of which had been a little piteous, took on a
sudden energy.
“Oh, as to that, I’ve been thinking it over—I’ve had to think over so
much—and I don’t believe the word applies.”
“Doesn’t apply?” I asked, in astonishment. “Why not—when it’s as late as
it is? It’s just as if Fate had been making us a plaything.”
“I don’t believe that. Life can’t be the sport of disorganized chance. If
Romeo takes poison ten minutes before Juliet wakes it’s because the years
behind them led up to the mistake.”
“You mean that we reap only what we sow?”
“And that life is as much a matter of development in a logical sequence
as the growth of certain plants from certain seeds. It isn’t—it can’t
be—a mere frenzy of haphazards. Things happen to us in a certain way
because what we’ve done leaves them no other way.”
“And was there no other way in which this could happen to you and me?”
“Think! Isn’t it the very outcome that might have been expected from what
we’ve been in the past?”