I haven't come out alive from that
shrieking hell to be satisfied with second-class emotions. I lay one night
under three dead bodies, not one over twenty-five. I knew them all. Each
was deeply in love with a woman....Well, I knew the value of life that
night if I never did before. And life was given to us, when we can hold on
to it, for the highest happiness of which we are individually capable, no
matter what else we are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest
pitch, not makeshifts....The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our
own characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy
her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief. I'll
have the highest or nothing."
"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it lasting.
Gora would make a great companion."
"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you will
understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at all. If you
had not brought her name into it I never should have done so. But now I
feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any cost."
He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and
snatched her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even more
than she was.
"I'll have you...have you...."
She nodded.
CHAPTER XII
I
Gora entered her room at the pension, mechanically lit the oil stove that
Alexina had procured for her, threw her hat on the bed, sat down in the low
chair and thrust her hands info the thick coils of hair piled as always on
top of her head.
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