And for one curious instant he looked out over the village, his fastidious scholar’s soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation, of which Rose understood absolutely nothing. She stood bewildered, silent, longing childishly to speak, to influence him, but not knowing what cue to take. ‘And then--’ he went on presently (but was the strange being speaking to her?)--‘so long as I stay there, worrying those about me, and eating my own heart out, I am out off from the only life that might be mine, that I might find the strength to live.’ The words were low and deliberate. After his moment of passionate speech, and hers of passionate sympathy, she began to feel strangely remote from him. ‘Do you mean the life of the student?’ she asked him after a pause, timidly. Her voice recalled him. He turned and smiled at her. ‘Of the dreamer, rather.’ And as her eyes still questioned, as he was still moved by the spell of her responsiveness, he let the new wave of feeling break in words. Vaguely at first, and then with a growing flame and force he fell to describing to her what the life of thought may be to the thinker, and those marvellous moments which belong to that life when the mind which has divorced itself from desire and sense sees spread out before it the vast realms of knowledge, and feels itself close to the secret springs and sources of being. And as he spoke, his language took an ampler turn, the element of smallness which attaches to all more personal complaint vanished, his words flowed, became eloquent, inspired--till the bewildered child beside him, warm through and through as she was with youth and passion, felt for an instant by sheer fascinated sympathy the cold spell, the ineffable prestige, of the thinker’s voluntary death in life. But only, for an instant. Then the natural sense of chill smote her to the heart. ‘You make me shiver,’ she cried, interrupting him. ‘Have those strange things--I don’t understand them--made you happy? Can they make anyone happy? Oh no, no! Happiness is to be got from living, seeing, experiencing, making friends, enjoying nature! Look at the world, Mr. Langham!’ she, said with bright cheeks, half smiling at her own magniloquence, her hand waving over the view before them. ‘What has it done that you should hate it so? If you can’t put up with people you might love nature. I--I can’t be content with nature, because I want some life first. Up in Whindale there is too much nature, not enough life. But if I had got through life--if it had disappointed me--then I should love nature. I keep saying to the mountains at home: “Not _now_, not _now_; I want something else, but afterward if I can’t get it, or if I get too much of it, why then I will love you, live with you. You are my second string, my reserve. You--and art--and poetry.”’