"Why not? as we must die." "But not now, not while we are young and happy. Afterward, when old age creeps on us and we look on love as weariness, it will not matter." "To me, that is the horror of it," with a quick distasteful shiver, leaning forward in her earnestness, "to feel that sooner or later there will be no hope; that we _must_ go, whether with or without our own will,--and it is never with it, is it?" "Never, I suppose." "It does not frighten me so much to think that in a month, or perhaps next year, or at any moment, I may die,--there is a blessed uncertainty about that,--but to know that, no matter how long I linger, the time will surely come when no prayers, no entreaties, will avail. They say of one who has cheated death for seventy years, that he has had a good long life: taking that, then, as an average, I have just fifty-one years to live, only half that to enjoy. Next year it will be fifty, then forty-nine, and so on until it comes down to one. What shall I do then?" "My own darling, how fanciful you are! your hands have grown cold as ice. Probably when you are seventy you will consider yourself a still fascinating person of middle age, and look upon these thoughts of to-day as the sickly fancies of an infant. Do not let us talk about it any more. Your face is white." "Yes," says Molly, recovering herself with a sigh, "it is the one thing that horrifies me. John is religious, so is Letty, while I--oh, that I could find pleasure in it! You see," speaking after a slight pause, with a smile, "I am at heart a rebel, and hate to obey. Mind you never give me an order! How good it would be to be young, and gay, and full of easy laughter, always,--to have lovers at command, to have some one at my feet forever!" "'Some one,'" sadly. "Would any one do? Oh, Molly, can you not be satisfied with me?" "How can I be sure? At present--yes," running her fingers lightly down the earnest, handsome face upraised to hers, apparently quite forgetful of her late emotion. "Well, at all events," says the young man, with the air of one who is determined to make the best of a bad bargain, "there is no man you like better than me." "At present,--no," says the incorrigible Molly. "You are the greatest flirt I ever met in my life," exclaims he, with sudden anger. "Who? I?" "Yes,--you," vehemently. A pause. They are much farther apart by this time, and are looking anywhere but at each other. Molly has her lap full of daisies, and is stringing them into a chain in rather an absent fashion; while Luttrell, who is too angry to pretend indifference, is sitting with gloom on his brow and a straw in his mouth, which latter he is biting vindictively. "I don't believe I quite understand you," says Molly at length. "Do you not? I cannot remember saying anything very difficult of comprehension."