"Four miles an hour. In an hour and a half we shall be walking up the drive. Oh, yes, I feel you have no faith in my walking powers, but when I wind myself up I'm equal to any man—and the difficulty is to stop. When I'm thoroughly in it, I feel I could walk on for ever." She walked as if she liked it; her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground, her tread was so light and springy. "What a pity you don't smoke!" Randolph said. "Would you object to my pipe?" "Of course not. Dad is old-fashioned; I think I am too. I never could take to it. I assure you I'm a century behind most contemporaries of mine." Randolph did not respond. She went on: "It's an advantage in one way. I don't get sick longings for an active independent life. I'm too pleased with myself and my surroundings. Don't you think I'm a very self-satisfied creature? Aunt Dannie says I am." "I think you would be contented with very little," said Randolph gravely. "I wish I could be. Hand your secret on to me. I can't be content with my circumstances." "Ah," said Sidney, drawing a long breath, "content or discontent is a matter of long or short sight, isn't it? I have learnt that it is." Randolph began to think it out. "How?" he questioned. "Even a sandbank in a deluge doesn't affect your spirits." "Well, it might be worse," said Sidney; "and I'm not going to have you think me other than I am. A fit of discontent took me out this afternoon and abstracted me from the present. When I stuck, I readjusted my focus, and then felt better." "Still I don't understand." "'For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.'" The words came softly but very firmly from Sidney's lips. "But you don't apply that to the sandbank?" Sidney's laugh rippled out. "I was going to the cause that made me drift to the sandbank. We were talking of general content and discontent, weren't we? That quotation gives present and future; if we see as far as the end of it, there's not much to grumble at, is there?" "You're very religious," Randolph said vaguely. "Oh, I'm not. I wish I were; but I stake my all on the Book from which that saying comes. I believe it through and through. And it's such a cheerful creed." Randolph walked along silently for a few minutes. He thought over his disappointments and disillusions in life, and he wondered if he had taken the Bible as his guide whether it would have brought him cheer and comfort. "I wish you would tell me more," he said. "If you bring disaster wilfully upon yourself, can you still look ahead and forget the present? It sounds ghostly and unreal. What is our future? Who can tell? It is the present that matters."