Didn't I tell you I was a fanatic?" He broke off his harangue with a laugh. "Now how do you like me?" he asked. "I like you better than I ever did," said Arthur. "Ah! you think you do. But remember my definition: you only really like the man with whom you agree. Do you agree with me?" "I think I do." "Then what are you going to do with your own life?" The abrupt question struck upon the mind with a sharp clang, like the sudden breaking of a string on a violin. It was the old question which Arthur had debated so often and so wearily. During this lyric month of love it had been forgotten, his mind had been bathed in delicious languor; but now the question returned upon him with singular and painful force, and his mind woke from its trance. What was he to do with his life? And as he asked the question, for the first time he caught a full vision of the gravity and splendour of existence. Man was born to do, not alone to feel, to act as well as love. And beautiful as love was, he saw with instant certainty that in creatures like Elizabeth it rested on a solid base of intellectual idealism. That was its final evolution: it was no longer the wild, passionate mating of forest lovers; it was a thing infinitely delicate and pure, infinitely complex and sensitive, in which the spirit, with all its agonies and exultations, was the dominating force. For a breathless moment he was conscious of the grave eyes of Elizabeth resting on him with an anxious tenderness of inquisition. Then he answered in a low voice, "I wish to make my life worthy of the highest. That is as far as I can see." The speech was the implied offer of himself to Elizabeth, and she knew it. Her face was suffused with happy light, and her breast rose and fell in a long satisfied sigh. "That is as far as any one need see," said Vickars. And then the tense moment broke, and the conversation flowed back into ordinary channels.