I've left off
thinking about it. I'm going to be very happy again, and so must you
be. We won't let one mad young man turn all our beautiful life sour,
will we?"
He bent down and kissed her hand. "Permit me to accompany you at
least," he begged. "I cannot endure--"
But she shook her head; and as she presently walked through the rain
holding Fritzing's umbrella,--none had been bought to replace hers,
broken on the journey--getting muddier and more draggled every
minute, she felt that now indeed she had got down to elementary
conditions, climbed right down out of the clouds to the place where
life lies unvarnished and uncomfortable, where Necessity spends her
time forcing you to do all the things you don't like, where the whole
world seems hungry and muddy and wet. It was an extraordinary
experience for her, this slopping through the mud with soaking shoes,
no prospect of a meal, and a heart that insisted on sinking in spite
of her attempts to persuade herself that the situation was amusing. It
did not amuse her. It might have amused somebody else,--the Grand
Duke, for instance, if he could have watched her now (from, say, a
Gothic window, himself dry and fed and taken care of), being punished
so naturally and inevitably by the weapons Providence never allows to
rust, those weapons that save parents and guardians so much personal
exertion if only they will let things take their course, those sharp,
swift consequences that attend the actions of the impetuous.
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