Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/285

 his leg, poor soul...oh, a hundred years ago. They were gone, all these lovely creatures.

'It is a good thing for one occasionally to feel restless. It makes you take stock of yourself and the manner of life that you are leading.'

'Oh, Cousin Poggy always keeps track of that for me. Only to-day she asked me what I intended to do with my life.'

'And what did you tell her?' His voice was eager, and again he bent towards her so that again she thought of all the fine horses she had known, and of Moses, the donkey.

'I told her that I intended to—live it.' She looked him squarely in the eye as if challenging him to keep her from this secret expectation of joy.

'Live it?'

'Yes. I want to travel some more and write a great deal; what, I hardly know as yet, but something that will include all of life as I have seen it. I mean all. Show how varied and exciting and boring and vulgar and beautiful and funny and serious it is...'

'You aim high; Lanice...you once let me call you that...tell me this, will you be satisfied to go on, always looking back towards a love—I suppose you'd call it—that's gone, never expecting anything from the future?'

She cast down her eyes, partly because she was afraid that he might read there the fact that what he supposed she called love was indeed gone. It hurt her because the pain of the memory was now almost a pleasure. She sat calm and collected close beside