“I don’t see it. I don’t understand why we get tired of a fine thing.”
“Well, my dear, isn’t that the whole damned puzzle? You could not play the Moonlight Sonata over and over again all day long and all night without growing to hate it. You’d fatigue your sense of hearing till it drove you mad. That’s what life does to us. We look at the beautiful thing and don’t see it any more because we have looked at it too closely or too long. What was once a revelation becomes a commonplace. But what can we do about it? Some of us do try to avert disaster by having all the variety we can in life, by contrasting one thing with another.”
She looked away from him for a minute and then she turned and slid down beside him.
“I know something that will never be commonplace,” she said softly, looking intently into his face.
“Thank you, dear. That was charmingly said.”
“Dane, you’re a lovely person. I wish—I hope ———” Her voice broke.
“Taken as meant, dear,” he said lightly.
“Oh, I’m so happy, and it seems unnatural, it’s just all so beautiful here with you.”
“Cheer up, dear. It won’t last. It’s blowing up for rain, and we shall have to sit in the tents, and cook by the kerosene stove, and it smells horribly.”
She laughed. “But you said if it rained we could go fishing out on the flats.”
“That’s true, we can.”
“Well then, that’s a poor disaster to threaten me with.” She lay happily down beside him and yawned.
“Good Lord. You’re going to sleep again,” he said. “We’ll go home.”
But Valerie had almost slept herself out, and when
