And the people, the vast unescapable horde
of the dull-but-nice or the merely dull who saw in their meetings nothing
either particularly spectacular or pitiful or worth applause.
And always after the parting, a little crippled doubt tapping its crutches
along the alleys of either mind. "Do I _really?_ Because if I do, how can I
be so tired sometimes with her, with him? And why can't I say more and do
more and be more when he, when she? And everybody says. And they're older
than we are--mightn't it be true? And--" And then, remorsefully, the next
day, all doubt burnt out by the clear hurt of absence. "Oh how could I!
When it is real--when it is like that--when it is the only thing worth
while in the world!"
But absence and meetings of this sort told on them inescapably, and both
being, unfortunately, of a rather high-strung intelligence and youth,
recognized it, no matter how much consciousness might deny it, and wondered
sometimes, rather pitiably, why they couldn't be always at one temperature,
like lovers in poetry, and why either should ever worry or hurt the other
when they loved.
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