Another thing, too, urged him to seek the solitude of his chamber, for after dinner he had sat for a couple of hours with his sister, talking over the events and changes of the long interval since they had met,—the details that cannot be told in letters, the feelings that no one writes. And he came upstairs with his first impression of her character slightly modified. She had more in her than he first divined. Beneath that shadowy and silken manner he had caught traces of distinct purpose. For one thing she was determined to keep him in England. He had told her frankly about his arrangement with the lumber Company, explaining that he regarded his present visit in the light of a holiday. ‘I suppose that is—er—wise of you,’ she said, but she had not been able to conceal her disappointment. She asked him presently if he really wanted to live all his life in such a place, and what it was in English life, or civilised, conventional life, that he so disliked, and Paul, feeling distinctly uncomfortable—for he loathed giving pain—had answered evasively, with more skill than he knew, ‘“Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.” I suppose my treasure—the only kind I know—is out there in the great woods, Margaret.’ ‘Paul, are you married, then?’ she asked with a start; and when he laughed and assured her most emphatically that he was not, she looked exceedingly puzzled and a little shocked too. ‘Are you so very fond of this—er—treasure, then?’ she asked point blank in her softest manner, ‘and is she so—I mean, can’t you bring her home and acknowledge her?’ And after his first surprise when he had gathered her meaning, it took him a long time to explain that there was no woman concerned at all, and that it was entirely a matter of his temperament. ‘Everybody makes his own world, remember,’ he laughed, ‘and its size depends, I suppose, upon the power of the imagination.’ ‘Then I fear one’s imagination is a very poor one,’ she said solemnly, ‘or else I have none at all. I cannot pretend to understand your tastes for trees and woods and things; but you’re exactly like poor Dick in that way, and I suppose one must be really clever to be like that.’ ‘A year is a long time, Margaret,’ he said after a pause, to comfort her. ‘Much may happen before it’s over.’ ‘I hope so,’ she had answered, standing behind his chair and stroking his head. ‘By that time you may have met some one who will reconcile you to—to staying here—a little longer.’ She patted his head as though he were a Newfoundland dog, he thought. It made him laugh. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.