Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/34

26 George Dane had to think. 'How do I know, after all? What practice has one ever had in estimating the inestimable? Particular cheapness certainly isn't the note that we feel struck all round; but don't we fall naturally into the view that there must be a price to anything so awfully sane?'

The good Brother in his turn reflected. 'We fall into the view that it must pay—that it does pay.'

'Oh, yes; it does pay!' Dane eagerly echoed. 'If it didn't it wouldn't last. It has got to last, of course!' he declared.

'So that we can come back?'

'Yes—think of knowing that we shall be able to!'

They pulled up again at this and, facing each other, thought of it, or at any rate pretended to; for what was really in their eyes was the dread of a loss of the clue. 'Oh, when we want it again we shall find it,' said the good Brother. 'If the place really pays, it will keep on.'

'Yes, that's the beauty; that it isn't, thank heaven, carried on only for love.'

'No doubt, no doubt; and yet, thank heaven, there's love in it too. They had lingered as if, in the mild, moist air, they were charmed with the patter of the rain and the way the garden drank it. After a little, however, it did look rather as if they were trying to talk each other out of a faint, small fear. They saw the increasing rage of life and the recurrent need, and they wondered proportionately whether to return to the front when their hour should sharply strike would be the end of the dream. Was this a threshold perhaps, after all, that could only be crossed one way? They must return to the front sooner or later—that was certain: for each his hour would strike. The flower would have been gathered and the trick played—the sands, in short, would have run.

There, in its place, was life—with all its rage; the vague unrest of the need for action knew it again, the stir of the faculty that had been refreshed and reconsecrated. They seemed each, thus confronted, to close their eyes a moment