"But what do we learn, Jim?" she asked him tremulously. "What is its value? Is it sophistry or knowledge? I lived in that little cottage once. I have smiled at the memory of those days so often. I did homely tasks and dreamed of books and learning. To me it seems, although my fingers are bleeding, that I have climbed. And to him--and he looked just like something out of the Bible, Jim--I am nothing more--" "Don't," he interrupted. "He is of his world and you of yours. You can't work out the sum you are trying to solve, there isn't any common denominator." "I don't know," she answered, a little pitifully. "There was a single second, as I saw him sitting there with his Bible on his knee and remembered that he was a clean, well-living, honest man, when my heart began to shake. I remembered that he was my father. It seems to me that it is all wrong that there should be any difference between us. I suddenly felt that a brain really didn't count for anything, after all, that all the culture in the world wasn't so beautiful as a single right feeling." He slackened again the speed of the car. As far as they could see was a great open space of moorland, with flaming bushes of yellow gorse, little clumps of early heather, and, in the distance, a streak of blue from the undergrowth of a long belt of firs. She looked about her for a moment and closed her eyes. "There," he said, "is one of the simplest phases of beauty, the world has ever given us--flowers and trees, an open space and a west wind. There isn't any one who can look at these things and be happy who isn't somewhere near the right path, Marcia." She leaned back, her eyes fixed dreamily upon the blue distance. "Just drive on, please, Jim," she begged. CHAPTER XXI David ate his three cutlets and, both as regards appetite and in other ways, was a great success at the little luncheon party. Afterwards, they finished the bottle of Marsala under a cedar tree, and whilst the Colonel indulged in reminiscences, Sylvia's eyes rested more than once upon the automobile drawn up before the door. It was quite an adventure in her rather humdrum life, and, after all, there was no reason why a fairy prince shouldn't be an American millionaire and come in a Rolls-Royce. "I am sure I hope you'll like Broomleys, Mr. Thain," the Colonel said, as David rose to make his adieux. "I am delighted to leave the place in the hands of such a good tenant. It makes one almost sorry to go away when one realises what one is missing in the shape of neighbours, eh, Sylvia?" Sylvia was unaccountably shy, but she raised her eyes to David's for a moment. "It is most disappointing," she agreed. "Mr. Thain is such a sympathetic shopper." David drove off a little gloomily. "Why the devil couldn't I fall in love with a nice girl like that," he muttered to himself, "instead of--"