The Incomplete Amorist

Quite suddenly and to her own intense surprise, she laughed out loud.

"What is it?" his alert vanity bristled in the query.

"It's nothing--only everything! Life's so futile! We pat and pinch our little bit of clay, and look at it and love it and think it's going to be a masterpiece.--and then God glances at it--and He doesn't like the modelling, and He sticks his thumb down, and the whole thing's broken up, and there's nothing left to do but throw away the bits."

"Oh, no," said Vernon; "everything's bound to come right in the end. It all works out straight somehow."

She laughed again.

"Optimism--from you?"

"It's not optimism," he asserted eagerly, "it's only--well, if everything doesn't come right somehow, somewhere, some day, what did He bother to make the world for?"

"That's exactly what I said, my dear," said she. She permitted herself the little endearment now and then with an ironical inflection, as one fearful of being robbed might show a diamond pretending that it was paste.

"You think He made it for a joke?"

"If He did it's a joke in the worst possible taste," said she, "but I see your point of view. There can't be so very much wrong with a world that has Her in it,--and you--and possibilities."

"Do you know," he said slowly, "I'm not at all sure that--Do you remember the chap in Jane Eyre?--he knew quite well that that Rosamund girl wouldn't make him the wife he wanted. Yet he wanted nothing else. I don't want anything but her; and it doesn't make a scrap of difference that I know exactly what sort of fool I am."

"A knowledge of anatomy doesn't keep a broken bone from hurting," said she, "and all even you know about love won't keep off the heartache. I could have told you that long ago."

"I know I'm a fool," he said, "but I can't help it. Sometimes I think I wouldn't help it if I could."

"I know," she said, and something in her voice touched the trained sensibilities of the Amorist. He stooped to kiss the hand that teased the topazes.

"Dear Jasmine Lady," he said, "my optimism doesn't keep its colour long, does it? Give me some tea, won't you? There's nothing so wearing as emotion."

She gave him tea.

"It's a sort of judgment on you, though," was what she gave him with his first cup: "you've dealt out this very thing to so many women,--and now it's come home to roost."