they get up.” He slanted his hat anew: under cover of this movement he raised his feet to the rail, settling down on his spine. She said:
“So many people waste their time over things like architecture and such. It’s much better to be a part of life, don’t you think? Much better to be in it yourself and make your own mistakes and enjoy making them and suffering for them, than to make your life barren through dedicating it to an improbable and ungrateful posterity. Don’t you think so?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Pete said cautiously. He lit a cigarette. “Breakfast is late to-day.”
“Of course you hadn’t. That’s what I admire about a man like you. You know life so well that you aren’t afraid of what it might do to you. You don’t spend your time thinking about life, do you?”
“Not much,” he agreed. “A man don’t want to be a fish, though.”
“You'll never be a fish, Pete (every one calls you Pete, don’t they?—do you mind?) I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness—people and things that are compatible, love. . . . So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind. . . . May I have a cigarette? Thanks. You smoke this brand, too, I see. A m— Thanks. I like your hat: it just suits the shape of your face. You have an extremely interesting face—do you know it? And your eyes. I never saw eyes exactly the color of yours. But I suppose lots of women have told you that, haven’t they?”
“I guess so,” Pete answered. “They'll tell you anything.”
“Ts that what love has meant to you, Pete—deception?” she leaned to the match, staring at him with the humorless invitation of her eyes, “Is that your opinion of us?”
