“You speak now as a poet, I think, Paul,” said he. “I suppose I must allow for some hyperbole and not be too much alarmed at your passion. Yet I must confess you seem to me too old for this child-talk of life and death, as if they were both compassed in a woman’s loving or not loving.” “I speak with all sobriety, father,” said I, “and I speak of that which I know. Forgive me if I suggest that you do less.” The priest’s eyes shaded as with sorrowful remembrance, and he looked out across the apple-trees as he answered: “You think I have always been a priest,” said he; “that I have always dwelt where the passions and pains of earth can touch me only as reflected from the hearts of others—the hearts into which I look as into a mirror. How should I understand what I see in such a mirror, if I had not myself once known these things that make storm in man’s life? I have loved, Paul.” “How much?” I asked. “Enough,” said he, “to lose her for her own good. I was a poor student with no prospects. She was beautiful and good, and her duty to her family required that she should marry as they wished. I had no right to her. I could not have her. For her love I vowed to live single—and I have come to know that the love of a woman is but one small part of life.” “Plainly,” said I, watching him with interest, “there was no resistless compulsion in that love. But you are right; of most lives love is but an accident, the plaything of propinquity. It dimly feels its insignificance in the face of serious affairs, and gives place, as it should. But there is a love which is different. Few, indeed, are they who are born to endure the light of its uncovered face; but all have heard the dim tradition of it. I cannot make you understand it, father, any more than I could teach a blind man the wonder of that radiating blue up there. That old half-knowledge of yours has sealed your eyes more closely than if you had never known at all. I can only tell you there is a love to which life and death must serve as lackeys.” As he listened, first astonishment marked his face; for never before had I spoken to him save as a boy to his trusted master. Then indignation struggled with solicitude. Then he seemed to remember that I was not a boy, but a man well hardened in the school of stern experience. Therefore he seemed to decide that I must be treated with mild banter. He lay back in his chair, folded his well-kept hands on his ample stomach, and chuckled indulgently before replying. “The fever is upon you, Paul,” said he. “Poet and peasant alike must have it. In this form it is not often more dangerous or more lasting than measles; but unlike measles, alas, one attack grants no immunity from another!” I loved him well, and his jibes stung me not at all. I fell comfortably into his mood. “A frontier fighter must be his own physician,” I said lightly. “You shall see how I will medicine this fever.”