Thus the three actors in the drama stood, when I became an inmate of Hilltop, and accepted the master’s invitation to undertake some of the minor classes in English, and stay on at the school indefinitely. It was my wish to see the little play--a pleasant comedy, I hoped--move forward to a happy ending. And yet--what was it that disturbed me now and then with forebodings? Something, doubtless, in the character of Keene, for he was the dominant personality. The key of the situation lay with him. He was the centre of interest. Yet he was the one who seemed not perfectly in harmony, not quite at home, as if something beckoned and urged him away. “I am glad you are to stay,” said he, “yet I wonder at it. You will find the life narrow, after all your travels. Ulysses at Ithaca--you will surely be restless to see the world again.” “If you find the life broad enough, I ought not to be cramped in it.” “Ah, but I have compensations.” “One you certainly have,” said I, thinking of Dorothy, “and that one is enough to make a man happy anywhere.” “Yes, yes,” he answered, quickly, “but that is not what I mean. It is not there that I look for a wider life. Love--do you think that love broadens a man’s outlook? To me it seems to make him narrower--happier, perhaps, within his own little circle--but distinctly narrower. Knowledge is the only thing that broadens life, sets it free from the tyranny of the parish, fills it with the sense of power. And love is the opposite of knowledge. Love is a kind of an illusion--a happy illusion, that is what love is. Don’t you see that?” “See it?” I cried. “I don’t know what you mean. Do you mean that you don’t really care for Dorothy Ward? Do you mean that what you have won in her is an illusion? If so, you are as wrong as a man can be.” “No, no,” he answered, eagerly, “you know I don’t mean that. I could not live without her. But love is not the only reality. There is something else, something broader, something----” “Come away,” I said, “come away, man! You are talking nonsense, treason. You are not true to yourself. You’ve been working too hard at your books. There’s a maggot in your brain. Come out for a long walk.”