"Oh, I'm not afraid, in spite of what Edith and Jack Prince say of you,"
she went on impulsively. "I like you all right and if I were a well woman
I should make love to you and marry you and then see to it there was
something in this world for you besides money and tall buildings and men
and machines that make guns."
Sam grinned. "You are like your father, driving the mowing machine up and
down under the church windows on Sunday mornings," he declared; "you think
you could remake the world by shaking your fist at it. I should like to go
and see you fined in a court room for starving sheep."
Janet, closing her eyes and lying back in her chair, laughed with delight
and declared that they would have a splendid quarrelsome evening.
After Edith had gone out, Sam sat through the evening with Janet,
listening to her exposition of life and what she thought it should mean to
a strong capable fellow like himself, as he had been listening ever since
their acquaintanceship began. In the talk, and in the many talks they had
had together, talks that rang in his ears for years, the little black-eyed
woman gave him a glimpse into a whole purposeful universe of thought and
action of which he had never dreamed, introducing him to a new world of
men: methodical, hard-thinking Germans, emotional, dreaming Russians,
analytical, courageous Norwegians, Spaniards and Italians with their sense
of beauty, and blundering, hopeful Englishmen wanting so much and getting
so little; so that at the end of the evening he went out of her presence
feeling strangely small and insignificant against the great world
background she had drawn for him.
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