Anna the Adventuress

"If you would only teach us all," he murmured, "how to acquire it."

"I suppose people would say that it is a matter of temperament," she

continued. "With me I believe that it is more. It has become a part of

the order of my life. Whatever may happen to-morrow I shall be none

the better for anticipating its miseries to-day."

"I wonder," he said, a trifle irrelevantly, "what the future has in

store for you."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Is that not rather a profitless speculation, my friend?"

He seemed deaf to her interruption. His grey eyes burned under his

shaggy eyebrows. He leaned towards her as though anxious to see more

of her face than that faint delicate profile gleaming like marble in

the uncertain light.

"You were born for great things," he said huskily. "For great

passions, for great accomplishments. Will you find your destiny, I

wonder, or will you go through life like so many others--a wanderer,

knocking ever at empty doors, homeless to the last? Oh, if one could

but find the way to your heart."

She laughed gaily.

"Dear friend," she said, "remember that you are speaking to one who

has failed in the only serious object which she has ever sought to

accomplish. My destiny, I am afraid, is going to lead me into the

ruts."

He shook his head.

"You were never born," he declared, "to follow the well worn roads. I

wonder," he added, after a moment's pause, "whether you ever realize

how young you are."

"Young? I am twenty-four."

"Yet you are very young. Anna, why will you persist in this

single-handed combat with life?"

"Don't!" she cried.

"But I must, I will," he answered fiercely. "Oh, I know you would stop

me if you could. This time you cannot. You are the woman I love, Anna.

Let me make your future for you. Don't be afraid that I shall stunt

it. I will give you a broad free life. You shall have room to develop,

you shall live as you will, where you will, only give me the right to

protect you, to free you from all these petty material cares."

She laid her hand softly upon his.

"Dear friend," she said, "do you not think that you are breaking an

unspoken compact? I am very sorry. In your heart you know quite well

that all that you have said is useless."

"Ay," he repeated, looking away from her. "Useless--worse than

useless."

"You are foolish," she declared, with a note of irritability in her

tone. "You would appear to be trying to destroy a comradeship which

has been very, very pleasant. For you know that I have made up my mind

to dig a little way into life single-handed. I, too, want to

understand--to walk with my head in the light. Love is a great thing,

and happiness a joy. Let me go my own way towards them. We may

meet--who can tell? But I will not be fettered, even though you would

make the chains of roses. Listen."