When about half-way home, she complained of fatigue and sat down to rest
on a bench that the heavy foliage had protected from the rain. I stood
before her and watched the pale light of the moon playing on her face.
After a moment's silence, she arose and in a constrained manner observed:
"Of what are you thinking? It is time for us to think of returning."
"I was wondering," I replied, "why God created you, and I was saying to
myself that it was for the sake of those who suffer."
"That is an expression, which, coming from you, I can not look upon
except as a compliment."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you appear to be very young."
"It sometimes happens," I said, "that one is older than the face would
seem to indicate."
"Yes," she replied, smiling, "and it sometimes happens that one is
younger than his words would seem to indicate."
"Have you no faith in experience?"
"I know that it is the name most young men give to their follies and
their disappointments; what can one know at your age?"
"Madame, a man of twenty may know more than a woman of thirty. The
liberty which men enjoy, enables them to see more of life and its
experiences than women; they go wherever they please and no barrier
restrains them; they test life in all its phases. When inspired by hope,
they press forward to achievement; what they will, they accomplish. When
they have reached the end, they return; hope has been lost on the route,
and happiness has broken its word.
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