“I don’t understand you, Opal,” she was saying. (Of course she didn’t, thought the Boy—­how could she?) “I am sure that I live.  And yet I have never felt that way—­thank goodness!  It’s vulgar to feel too deeply, Mamma used to say, and as I have grown older, I can see that she was right.  The best people never show any excess of emotion.  That is for tragedy queens, operatic stars, and—­the women we do not talk about!  Ladies cultivate repose!”

("Repose!—­mon Dieu!” thought Paul, behind the hedge.  He wished that she would!)

“And yet, Alice, you are—­married!”

“Married?—­of course!—­why not?” and the eavesdropper fancied he could see the wide-open gaze of well-bred English surprise that accompanied the words.  “One has to marry, of course.  That is what we are created for.  But one doesn’t make a fuss about it.  It’s only a custom—­a ceremony—­and doesn’t change existence much for most women, if they choose sensibly.  Of course there is always the chance of a mesalliance!  A woman has to risk that.”

“And you don’t—­love?”

The Boy was struck by a note that was almost horror in the opaline voice so near him.

“Love?  Why, Opal, of course we do!  It’s easy to love, you know, when a man is decent and half-way good to one.  I am sure I think a great deal of Algernon; but I dare say I should have thought as much of any other man I had happened to marry.  That is a wife’s duty!”

“Duty!—­and you call that love?” The horror in the tones had now changed to scorn.

“You have strange ideas of life, Opal.  I should be afraid to indulge them if I were you—­really I should!  You have lived so much in books that you seem to have a very garbled idea of the world.  Fiction is apt to be much of a fairy tale, a crazy exaggeration of what living really consists of!”

“Afraid? Why should I be afraid?  I am an American girl, remember, and Americans are afraid of nothing—­nothing!  Come, cousin, tell to me, if you can, why I should be afraid.”

“Oh, I don’t know! really I don’t!” There was a troubled, perplexed note in the English voice now.  “Such notions are apt to get girls into trouble, and lead them to some unhappy fate.  Too much ’life’—­as you call it—­must mean suffering, and sorrow, and many tears—­and maybe, sin!”

There was a shocked note in the voice of the young English matron as she added the last word, and her voice sank to a whisper.  But Paul Zalenska heard, and smiled.

“Suffering, and sorrow, and many tears,” repeated the American girl, musingly, “and maybe—­sin!” Then she went on, firmly, “Very well, Alice, give me the suffering and sorrow, and many tears—­and the sin, too, if it must be, for we are all sinners of greater or less degree—­but at any rate, give me life!  My life may still be far off in the future, but when the time comes, I shall certainly know, and—­I shall live!”