THE SENSE OF THE PAST
She held him for a moment with this, then she broke out: "How shall we ever know his possibility unless we give him a chance? What I'm dying to see is the best we can turn out quite by ourselves."
He sacrificed his indifference. "The best young man?"
"Oh I don't care how old he is———"
"So long as he's young!" Poor Pendrel—for want of anything better to do—interrupted.
But she held her course. "The older he is the more he'll have given us time to see. Of course," she splendidly added, "he may be a failure, and, if he is, that will more or less settle the question. We're nowhere till it is settled."
Ralph showed on his side no less noble a patience. "But isn't it settled by the cowboy?"
"The cowboy?" she stared.
"Why isn't he what you want, and why isn't he good enough? He sometimes in spite of his calling, I believe, lives to a great age. There are cases surely in which he will have given you time to see, and he has the great merit of standing there ready to your hand. You talk about the 'question,' but what is he but the best answer to it that any conditions at all conceivable can yield? You say mine—my conditions—are wrong; so that what are his, logically, unless right? If he isn't right with them it would seem therefore their fault. I wonder it doesn't strike
28
