"Not sufficiently to link her fate with mine for the journey from which there is no retreat. She admitted approval, liking, respect--words by which women disguise indifference; but she believed that she had a mission in life, a call from heaven to go forth to the poor and afflicted, to elevate the race--a sacred task, for which marriage would unfit her." "You pakehas are strange people," she said musingly. "And so she would not be happy because she desired to teach, to help the poor, the _common people_! And if she failed?" "She would have wasted her own life, and ruined that of another." "Life is often like that, so the books say--even the Bible. 'Vanity of vanities!' Either people do not get what they want, or find that it is not what they hoped for. Yet I suppose some people are happy--generally those who know the least. Listen to that girl singing. She is, if any one ever was." They had been descending the hill, when at an angle of the narrow path they came upon a young native woman, sitting at the door of a cottage which bore traces of European construction. A child stood at her knee, while she was busied about her simple task of needlework. The midday sun had warmed, not oppressed, the atmosphere, and there was an air of sensuous, natural enjoyment about her air and appearance as she looked over the river meadows where the tribe was employed. Her face lighted up with a smile of recognition as she saw Erena and her companion. "Good morning, Hira. Where is Henare? You are all alone here?" "Oh, he is at some road-work," she answered cheerfully, "but he always comes home at night. He gets good wages from the contractor." "What a nice cottage you have!--weather-boarded, too. Who built it?" "Oh, Henare and another half-caste chap sawed the boards and put it up. He likes living here better than in the kainga, and so do I. We can go down there when we want to." "Good-bye, then. I have been showing this pakeha gentleman the pah.--Now, those people are just sufficiently educated to be happy and contented," said Erena. "He is a steady, hard-working fellow, and, as roads are beginning to be made, he is able from his pay to build a cottage and live comfortably." "Education is a problem. If it leads people to think correctly on the great questions of life, it is--it must be--an advantage; but if, through anything in their condition, it produces envy and discontent, it is an evil, with which the nations have to reckon in the future." "I sometimes wish I had not been educated myself," she said with a sigh. "I seem to have all manner of tastes and hopes most unlikely to be realized. Whereas----" And just at that moment the lilt of the girl on the hillside came down to them, joyous with the magic tones of youthful love and hope. It furnished an answer to her questioning of fate, immediately apparent to both.