When I said he wasn't decent, I meant that he belonged in
the Stone Age, and I'm twentieth-century. We didn't fit together. I
suppose that's what we all mean when we say somebody isn't decent ...
that he's stayed behind in the procession. I don't mean that man was
a degenerate or anything like that ... if he could have found a Stone
Age woman he'd have ... they'd have made a good Stone Age marriage of
it. But he _didn't_, the girl he...."
"Do you know, Sylvia," Arnold broke in wonderingly, "I never before in
all my life had anybody speak to me of anything that really mattered.
And I never spoke this way myself. I've wanted to, lots of times; but
I didn't know people ever did. And to think of its being a girl who
does it for me, a girl who...." His astonishment was immense.
"Look here, Arnold," said Sylvia, with a good-natured peremptoriness.
"Let a girl be something besides a girl, can't you!"
But her attempt to change the tone to a light one failed. Apparently,
now that Arnold had broken his long silence, he could not stop
himself. He turned towards her with a passionate gesture of
bewilderment and cried: "Do you remember, before dinner, you asked
me as a joke what was the use of anything, and I said I didn't know?
Well, I _don't!_ I've been getting sicker and sicker over everything.
What the devil _am_ I here for, anyhow!"
As he spoke, a girl's figure stepped from the house to the veranda,
from the veranda to the turf of the terrace, and walked towards them.
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