The Brimming Cup

The girl burst into laughter at this, foolish, light-hearted mirth which

drenched the air all about her with the perfume of young gaiety. "Is it

Miss Druid, or Mrs. Druid?" was all she would say.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and cried between her gusts of

laughter, as if astonished, "Why, I do believe we are going to be happy

together. I do believe it's going to be fun to live with you."

His appalled surprise that she had again fallen into the pit of

incredulity was, this time, only half humorous. "For God's sake, what

did you think!"

She answered, reasonably, "Well, nobody ever is happy together, either

in books or out of them. Of all the million, million love-affairs that

have happened, does anybody ever claim any one to have been happy?"

His breath was taken away. He asked helplessly, "Well, why are you

marrying me?"

She replied very seriously, "Because I can't help myself, dear Neale.

Isn't that the only reason you're marrying me?"

He looked at her long, his nostrils quivering a little, gave a short

exclamation which seemed to carry away all his impatience, and finally

said, quietly enough, "Why, yes, of course, if that's the way you want

to put it. You can say it in a thousand thousand different ways."

He added with a sudden fury, "And never one of them will come anywhere

near expressing it. Look here, Marise, I don't believe you have the

faintest, faintest idea how big this thing is. All these fool clever

ways of talking about it . . . they're just a screen set up in front of

it, to my mind. It's enough sight bigger than just you or me, or

happiness or unhappiness. It's the meaning of everything!"

She considered this thoughtfully. "I don't believe I really know what

you mean," she said, "or anyhow that I feel what you mean. I have had

dreams sometimes, that I'm in something awfully big and irresistible

like a great river, flowing somewhere; but I've never felt it in waking

hours. I wish I could. It's lovely in dreams. You evidently do, even

awake."

He said, confidently, "You will, later on."

She ventured, "You mean, maybe, that I'm so shaken up by the little

surface waves, chopping back and forth, that I don't feel the big

current."

"It's there. Whether you feel it or not," he made final answer to her

doubt.

She murmured, "I wonder if there is anything in that silly,

old-fashioned notion that men are stronger than women, and that women

must lean on men's strength, to live?"