Her eyes seemed to entreat Prudence to see, to make, if she could, others see. 'It's like this,' the sad tones stammeringly explained. 'We're in a mess, Tommy and I; and we've got to get out of it somehow, if we can--find, you know, things we don't hate, things to go on with. That's all we want: to go on somehow and be happy, as we used to be happy. You know, you can't be happy if you're wishing all the time to have things you can't have, and to be things you can't be. So, either we must stop wishing--and we may do that in time--or we must find new things that we like. But that's bound to be a long job.' No movement of Prudence's demurred to that; its truth stared one in the face. 'And perhaps we can't do that; perhaps things stick always.' And to that, too, no denial came from the idealist of continual hope, who yet saw the eternal roads running. Betty, because she, too, saw their running, said finally: 'I suppose, really, one stays pretty much the same sort of person to the end.... And that's all right, as long as one doesn't run up against other sorts; it hurts to do that'--at the pain of that clash of codes her brows knit--'and that's why we won't try m-mixing the sorts; it wouldn't be what you call fair, on either sort.' Prudence heard the finality in that: it found its echo in her soul; but still she pleaded Warren's cause (he cared so much) with: 'But if both cared to.... Oh, that isn't quite all there is to it, I know--I'm not a fool who can only see one thing--but it's a thing that should count a great deal. Of all the many, many things, I believe that's the one that, perhaps, in the end counts most.' Betty admitted it. 'More than any one other; but not more than all the others together. You see, there are rather many, and it wouldn't do. It wouldn't w-work, you know it wouldn't; and--and it would hurt rather.... Oh, it wouldn't do.' She clenched her lip again between her teeth, perhaps to steady it. Prudence thought it all over, admitting it true, before saying, with a quick tremor in her own voice: 'But, perhaps, sometime--afterwards....' Betty unclasped her hands from her knee and leaned her chin on them, and looked straight in front of her. 'No,' she said; 'I think never. Then she gave it a turn, swerving as usual from her own part, with 'You know it--you yourself.' Prudence said nothing. That she knew it hardly needed affirmation; she knew it with such a sad, hopeless certainty. For the eternal roads run straitly, and their running is between gateless walls. The grey, artist's eyes were suddenly wet and blind, with a swift surging of many feelings. Seeing them, Betty said again: