He said nothing. “Why try to argue with a fanatic?” he thought, and they took their homeward way in silence. Bride left him at the castle door and went quietly up to her room. Eustace stood looking after her. “You are very beautiful, my cousin,” he said to himself, “and you fascinate me as no woman has fascinated me yet; but you are a mystic and a fanatic both--and both these are beings inexplicable to me--and yet I shall try to find you out, and teach you that there are nobler things a woman can be than you have dreamed of as yet.” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI _THE GOSPEL OF DISCONTENT_ Saul Tresithny was in a restless and disturbed frame of mind just now. He did not himself know what was creeping over him, but he had been for some time now experiencing a change of feeling,--a sense of weariness and disgust with his daily toil, with the people about him, with the world in general, that he had never felt before, and which perplexed him not a little. A few weeks earlier, when this state had first assailed him, he believed it to be the outcome of his growing affection for Genefer, the farmer’s daughter, and thought, if he could but assure himself that his affection was returned, he should be himself once more; but in this conjecture he had not proved right. Genefer had admitted her preference for him; they held stolen interviews at all manner of times in and about the farm; she took care that his material comforts were greater than they had ever been before, and he could (if he chose) look forward to settling in life at no very distant date with a wife and home of his own. And yet he was not happy--he was more restless and discontented than ever in his life before.