Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/15

Rh together. Now the friendship was coming to an end.

“After all,” said Byrne, when the door was closed, “if you’re alive you’ve got to live.”

Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.

“Wherefore?” she asked indulgently.

“Because there’s no such thing as passive existence,” he replied, grinning.

She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.

“I don’t see it at all,” she said.

“You can’t,” he protested, “any more than a tree can help budding in April—it can’t help itself, if it’s alive; same with you.”

“Well, them”—and again there was the touch of a sneer—“if I can’t help myself, why trouble, my friend?”

“Because—because I suppose I can’t help myself—if it bothers me, it does. You see, I”—he smiled brilliantly—“am April.”

She paid very little attention to him, but began, in a peculiar reedy, metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

“But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me—and and go through a kind of danse macabre——”

“But you bud underneath—like beech,” he said quickly.

“Really, my friend,” she said coldly, “I am too tired to bud.”

“No,” he pleaded, “no!” With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was stunned. Her