“The ‘world’ has smothered it--temporarily,” he put in gently. “And what is more,” I continued, ignoring his interruption, “I must confess that I have no stomach now for any ‘great experiment’ such as you think our coming together in this valley must involve. Your idea of reincarnation may be true--why not? It’s a most logical conception. And we three may have been together before--granted! I admit I rather like the notion. It may even be conceivable that the elemental powers of Nature are intelligent, that men and women could use them to their advantage, and that worship and feeling-with is the means to acquire them--it’s just as likely as that some day we shall send telegrams without wires, thoughts and pictures too!” I drew breath a moment, while he waited patiently, linking his arm in mine and listening silently. “It may even be possible, too,” I went on, finding some boyish relief in all these words, “that we three together in earlier days _did_--in some kind of primitive Nature Worship--make wrong use of an unconscious human body to evoke those particular Powers you say exist behind Wind and Fire, and that, having thus upset the balance of material forces, we must readjust that balance or suffer accordingly--_you_ in particular, since you were the prime mover----” “How well you state it,” he murmured. “How excellent your memory is after all.” “But even so,” I continued, nettled by his calm interpretation of my long and plodding objection, “and even if all you claim is true--I--I mean bluntly--that the transitory acceptance you woke in me years ago no longer holds. I am with you now merely to keep a promise, a boy’s promise, but my heart is no longer in the matter--except out of curiosity--curiosity pure and simple.” I stopped, or rather it was his face and the expression in his eyes that stopped me. I felt convicted of somewhat pompous foolishness, my sense of humour and proportion gone awry. Fear, with its ludicrous inhibitions, made me strut in this portentous fashion. His face, wearing the child’s expression of belief and confidence, arrested me by its sheer simplicity. But the directness of his rejoinder, however--of his words, at least, for it was not a reply--struck me dumb. “You are afraid for _her_,” he said without a trace of embarrassment or emotion, “because you love her still, even as she loves you--beneath.” If unconsciously or consciously I avoided his eye, he made no attempt to avoid my own. He looked calmly at me like some uncannily clairvoyant lawyer who has pierced the elaborate evasions of his cross-examined witness--yet a witness who believed in his own excuses, quite honestly self-deceived.