Free Tomorrow Is Forever by Gwen Bristow Page A

than believing we understand experiences we’ve never had. But the longer you live the more you find out that life consists mostly of getting used to things we don’t like. Keep trying.”
    â€œI will, Spratt.”
    He went on, “You know, most of us, when we say happiness, mean the absence of change. And that’s just fighting the facts. Our lives are always changing in spite of anything we can do about it. Eventually, if we learn anything, we learn to take what happens and go on with it.” He stopped abruptly, half abashed. “Queer, my talking like this. I don’t often. But there it is—I wish I could offer you more consolation.”
    â€œWhy, you have,” said Elizabeth.
    â€œHave I? How?”
    â€œBy being you. It’s hard to explain.”
    â€œThank you.” He took both her hands in his and gave them a hard grip. “You’re a swell girl, Elizabeth.”
    When she went into her room and turned on the light she felt a new elation. She had not seen this side of Spratt’s nature before. Finding it made her feel that for the first time since she came to California she had acquired, not another companion to amuse her leisure, but a friend who would be there when she needed him.
    The following Sunday, as they were driving home, after a brisk day of sun and water, she leaned back in the car, saying drowsily, “I’ll probably be asleep by eight o’clock tonight. I’m so tired!”
    â€œI am too,” said Spratt, “fun-tired. Let’s do this often.”
    â€œI’d like to. But I thought you worked most of your weekends.”
    â€œSo I do, but that’s been because there was nobody interesting to play with. I work too hard.”
    â€œAre you just beginning to realize that?” she asked.
    â€œNot exactly, but I’m just beginning to admit it. Work can be like liquor sometimes, an escape from too much of one’s own company.”
    She glanced up, expecting him to go on, but Spratt remarked on the coloring of the desert hills in the sunset and said no more about himself. Remembering his remark later, however, she thought she should have expected it. She might have realized long ago that like so many other brilliant and ambitious men, Spratt was essentially lonely. Yet she had not realized it, and she was glad to do so now. She needed his friendship; it was good to know that in spite of his self-assurance Spratt also had need of her.
    When he asked her to marry him she was not surprised. She did not answer him at once. Spratt had given her so much, more than she knew until now, when she had to consider the possibility of letting him go. But she wanted to be fair, and in fairness there were matters that had to be explained.
    She explained them on an evening when they were in her apartment, Spratt listening with quiet attention while she spoke. She told him how she had loved Arthur, and how she had suffered at being told he was dead. “It can’t be easy for you to hear this,” she said.
    â€œIt’s easier now than it’ll ever be again,” he answered. “Go on.”
    Elizabeth stood up. Moving around behind her chair she put her hands on the back of it and held it while she talked.
    â€œSpratt, you told me to take this out and face it. I’ve tried to. I’ve tried to be practical, to tell myself everything I might tell somebody else. I’ve said to myself that maybe Arthur wasn’t worth what I gave him, maybe nobody ever born could deserve so much. Maybe it was just a young girl’s infatuation, taking all the romantic heroes of her dreams and embodying them in the form of a handsome lover. I can say all this, I can accept it with the cool reasoning part of my mind, but beyond that it doesn’t go. My emotions, my spirit—what the poets would call my heart—simply­ won’t accept it. Because I had what I had. The simple truth is that for the year we