"
"But I do not want to!" came bitterly from her.
"Sometimes," he said, with more of his usual manner, "we do things we do
not want to, and through the doing of them, we get to want to. Do
something!--whether you want to or not. Stop doing futile things and
dwelling on the sense of their futility. Why, Ernestine, come up to the
hospital and go to work as a nurse! Heaven knows I never expected to
advise you to do that, but _anything_--painting pictures or scrubbing
floors--that will bring you back to a sense of living--the obligations of
life--show you that something is _yours_ that life and death and _hell_
can't take from you!"
And still he sat there, thinking. In just a moment he must go--go away
leaving her alone with the years which awaited her. For just an instant
it seemed as though all of the past and all of the future were in his
keeping. What word leave with her? He knew by her passionate breathing
that he had reached her. And now he was going away. Could he have done
more--reached deeper? In this, too, had he failed? What word leave with
her? His heart was so full of many things that his mind did not know what
to choose.
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