"Well, what shall we do? Don't make me harden my heart before it has had
time to soften naturally. Give my poor pagan sympathies a little time to
ripen."

"But you have lived in New York. Did you find it such a strain on your
sympathies?"

"I was a visitor; and a girl is not expected to have sympathies. But to
begin our home there: we should have to strike a note of some sort. How if
my note should jar with yours? Paul, dear, it isn't nice to have
convictions when one is young and going to be married. You know it isn't.
It's not poetic, and it's not polite, and it's a dreadful bore!"

The altruist and lover winced at this. Allowing for exaggeration, which
was the life of speech with her, he knew that Moya was giving him a bit of
her true self, that changeful, changeless self which goes behind all law
and "follows joy and only joy." Her voice dropped into its sweetest tones
of intimacy.

"Why need we live in a crowd? Why must we be pressed upon with all this
fuss and doing? Doing, doing! We are not ready to do anything yet. Every
day must have its dawn;--and I don't see my way yet; I'm hardly awake!"

"Darling, hush! You must not say such things to me. For you only to look
at me like that is the most terrible temptation of my life. You make me
forget everything a man is bound--that I of all men am bound to remember."

"Then I will keep on looking! Behold, I am Happiness, Selfishness, if you
like! I have come to stay. No, really, it's not nice of you to act as if