"Sweet," he muttered sentimentally, "sweet little girl. Don't you see we'd just be putting off what's bound to happen? I'll be going to France in a few months--"
She leaned away from him and clinching her fists lifted her face toward the sky.
"I want to die," she said, as if moulding each word carefully in her heart.
"Dot," he whispered uncomfortably, "you'll forget. Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands."
"All right."
Absorbed in himself, he continued: "I've often thought that if I hadn't got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it--but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone--" He broke off uneasily. She had risen and was standing, dry-eyed, picking little leaves from a dark vine.
"Dot--"
"Go way," she said coldly. "What? Why?"
"I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me you'd better go."
"Why, Dot--"
"What's death to me is just a lot of words to you. You put 'em together so pretty."
"I'm sorry. I was talking about you, Dot."
"Go way from here."
He approached her with arms outstretched, but she held him away.
"You don't want me to go with you," she said evenly; "maybe you're going to meet that--that girl--" She could not bring herself to say wife. "How do I know? Well, then, I reckon you're not my fellow any more. So go way."
For a moment, while conflicting warnings and desires prompted Anthony, it seemed one of those rare times when he would take a step prompted from within. He hesitated. Then a wave of weariness broke against him. It was too late--everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water. The little girl in the white dress dominated him, as she approached beauty in the hard symmetry of her desire. The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. With some profound and uncharted pride she had made herself remote and so achieved her purpose.