“Honest, I’d like to get what you’re sayin’,” said Lucy, perplexed and softly candid. “Maybe you mean that we oughta keep movin’ all the time, hearin’ and seein’ different things, an’ maybe you’re right about that. I get tired of goin’ down to work every mornin’ and coming back to the same room every night. I’d like to travel around, an’ see different people an’ places, an’ find out what everything’s like. But I guess I never will.” “It’s much easier than you imagine,” said Carl. “Just pack up your grip some morning and ride away to another city and see what happens there. After you’ve done it you’ll wonder what held you back.” “Oh I just couldn’t do that. I’d make my mother so unhappy if I did, an’ besides, I’d be afraid of goin’ somewhere all alone. I might not find any work in the place where I went, an’ then I’d be up against it. I’d like to travel around with plenty of money, an’ nothin’ to worry me, an’----” Her words trailed off into a revealing silence, and Carl smiled sadly at the little, pitifully obvious hint within her faltering. Perhaps it might be best to marry this simple, mildly wistful, ignorant girl and surrender himself to monotonous toil and sensual warmth, forgetting the schemes that were torturing his heart and mind. The reaction captured him for a time and then died. No, he was gripped by a snarling, nimble blackguard who was determined to lead him to destruction or victory. And in the meantime, here was sensual forgetfulness--an interlude with a girl to whom happiness was merely physical desire captivated by filmy and soothing disguises. They reached her home, a grey cottage in the suburbs, with a little yard of dusty grass and a modest porch. It bore an aspect of abject simplicity, and that meditative leer possessed by the fronts of all cottages. They sat in a hammock on the porch, and Carl suddenly kissed her with the theatrical intensity of one who is trying to shake off a deliberate role. The gasping expostulations of her voice were contradicted by the limpness of her body, and sighing at this prearranged incongruity, Carl kissed her again, still feeling like a skillful charlatan and still hoping to lure himself into a tumultuous spontaneity. This time she was silent but gripped his shoulders with both hands, while little shades of fright and desire gambled for her face. Suddenly, a meek candor came to her eyes and the seriousness of a child lost in an overwhelming forest moulded her lips. “Will you be good to me if I let you?” she whispered. The pathetic, cringing frankness of her words made a stabbing lunge at his deliberateness and a feeling of troubled tenderness mastered his heart. He wept inaudibly, as though he himself had become a begging child, and the illusion of rare experience, cheated and twisted out of his life, returned to betray him. His head struck her shoulder like the death of regret. CHAPTER VII.