"Edward makes it one of his chief studies," she added at once, looking straight before her. "He has told me what to read about it." Mallard let the subject fall. But presently they passed a yoke of oxen drawing a cart, and, as he paused to look at them, he said: "Don't you like to watch those animals? I can never be near them without stopping. Look at their grand heads, their horns, their majestic movement! They always remind me of the antique--of splendid power fixed in marble, These are the kind of oxen that Homer saw, and Virgil." Miriam gazed, but said nothing. "Does your silence mean that you can't sympathize with me?" "No. It means that you have given me a new way of looking at a thing; and I have to think." She paused; then, with a curious inflection of her voice, as though she were not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether playful or sarcastic: "You wouldn't prefer me to make an exclamation?" He laughed. "Decidedly not. If you were accustomed to do so, I should not be expressing my serious thoughts." The pleasant mood continued with him, and, a smile still on his face, he asked presently: "Do you remember telling me that you thought I was wasting my life on futilities?" Miriam flushed, and for an instant he thought he had offended her. But her reply corrected this impression. "You admitted, I think, that there was much to be said for my view." "Did I? Well, so there is. But the same conviction may be reached by very different paths. If we agreed in that one result, I fancy it was the sole and singular point of concord." Miriam inquired diffidently: "Do you still think of most things just as you did then?" "Of most things, yes." "You have found no firmer hope in which to work?" "Hope? I am not sure that I understand you." He looked her in the face, and she said hurriedly: "Are you still as far as ever from satisfying yourself? Does your work bring you nothing but a comparative satisfaction?" "I am conscious of having progressed an inch or two on the way of infinity," Mallard replied. "That brings me no nearer to an end." "But you _have_ a purpose; you follow it steadily. It is much to be able to say that." "Do you mean it for consolation?" "Not in any sense that you need resent," Miriam gave answer, a little coldly. "I felt no resentment. But I should like to know what sanction of a life's effort you look for, now? We talked once, perhaps you remember, of one kind of work being 'higher' than another. How do you think now on that subject?" She made delay before saying: "It is long since I thought of it at all. I have been too busy learning the simplest things to trouble about the most difficult." "To learn, then, has been _your_ object all this time. Let me question you in turn. Do you find it all-sufficient?" "No; because I have begun too late. I am doing now what I ought to have done when I was a girl, and I have always the feeling of being behindhand."