"No one is more conscious of that than I am," replied Miss Loring.
"Indeed, it seems often, as if I were made the sport of adverse
influences, and constrained to act and to appear wholly different
from what I desire to seem. There are some of life's phenomena, Mr.
Dexter, that puzzle at times my poor brain sorely."

"Don't puzzle over such things, Miss Loring," said Mr. Dexter; "I
never do. Leave mysteries to philosophers; there is quite enough of
enjoyment upon the surface of things without diving below, into the
dark caverns of doubt and vague speculation. I never liked the word
phenomenon."

"To me it has ever been an attraction. I always seem standing at
some closed door, hearkening to vague sounds within and longing to
enter. The outer life presents itself to me as moving figures in a
show, and I am all impatient, at times, to discover the hidden
machinery that gives such wonderful motion.

"Morbid; all morbid!" answered Dexter, in a lively manner. "Dreams
in the place of realities, Miss Loring. Don't philosophize; don't
speculate; don't think--at least not seriously. Your thinkers are
always miserable. Take life as it is--full of beauty, full of
pleasure. The sources of enjoyment are all around us. Let us drink
at them and be thankful."

"You are a philosopher, I perceive," said Miss Loring, with a smile,
"and must have been a thinker, in some degree, to have formed a
theory."

"I am a cheerful philosopher."