Simon tells me I should feel much the same, if it were the top
of the highest peak in the Himmalays."
Lady Joan did not reply, and Cosmo too was silent for a time.
"Don't you think," he began again, "though life is so very good--to
me especially with you here--you would get very tired if you
thought you had to live in this world always--for ever and ever and
ever, and never, never get out of it?"
"No, I don't," said Joan. "I can't say I find life so nice as you
think it, but one keeps hoping it may turn to something better."
She was amused with what she counted childish talk for a boy of his
years--so manly too beyond his years!
"That is very curious!" he returned. "Now I am quite happy; but
this moment I should feel just in a prison, if I thought I should
never get to another world; for what you can never get out of, is
your prison--isn't it?"
"Yes--but if you don't want to get out?"
"Ah, that is true! but as soon as that comes to a prisoner, it is a
sign that he is worn out, and has not life enough in him to look
the world in the face. I was talking about it the other day with
Mr. Simon, else I shouldn't have got it so plain. The blue roof so
high above us there, is indeed very different from the stone vault
of a prison, for there is no stop or end to it. But if you can
never get away from under it, never get off the floor at the bottom
of it, I feel as if it might almost as well be something solid that
held me in.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248