"I have been in the mountains in March," he said. "It was pretty nasty. I suppose you have spent summers there. I believe you went to the Pyrenees."
"But I know the mountains in March, too—in every season, and I love them in all weathers. I love the storms, when the snow and sleet and wind come driving down, and the trees crack, and the roads are blocked, and the windows are covered with ice; when there's a big drift at the door that you must climb over, and that stays there almost till the flowers bloom. And when the winter is breaking, and the great rains come, and the wind,—oh, it's no such little wind as this, but wind that tears up big trees and throws them about for fun, and the limbs fly, and it's dangerous to go out unless you look everywhere, and in the night something strikes the roof, and you wake up and lie there and wonder if the house itself won't be carried away soon, perhaps to the ocean, and turn into a ship that will sail until it reaches a country where the sun shines and there are palm trees, and men who wear turbans, and where there are marble houses with gold on them. And in that country where the little house might land, a lot of people come down to the shore and they kneel down and say, 'The sea has brought a princess to rule over us.' Then they put a crown on her head and lead her to one of the marble and gold houses, so she could rule the country and live happy ever after."
As the girl ran on, her companion sat motionless, listening—meanwhile steadying their big umbrella to keep their retreat cozy. When she paused, he said:
"I did not know that you knew the hills in winter. You have seen and felt much more than I. And," he added reflectively, "I should not think, with such fancy as yours, that you need want for a vocation; you should write."
She shook her head rather gravely. "It is not fancy," she said, "at least not imagination. It is only reading. Every child with a fairy-book for companionship, and nature, rides on the wind or follows subterranean passages to a regal inheritance. Such things mean nothing afterward. I shall never write."
They made their way to the Art Museum to wander for a little through the galleries. In the Egyptian room they lingered by those glass cases where men and women who died four thousand years ago lie embalmed in countless wrappings and cryptographic cartonnage—exhibits, now, for the curious eye, waiting whatever further change the upheavals of nations or the progress of an alien race may bring to pass.
They spoke in subdued voice as they regarded one slender covering which enclosed "A Lady of the House of Artun"—trying to rebuild in fancy her life and surroundings of that long ago time. Then they passed to the array of fabrics—bits of old draperies and clothing, even dolls' garments—that had found the light after forty centuries, and they paused a little at the cases of curious lamps and ornaments and symbols of a vanished people.
"Oh, I should like to explore," she murmured, as she looked at them. "I should like to lead an expedition to uncover ancient cities, somewhere in Egypt, or India, or Yucatan. I should like to find things right where they were left by the people who last saw them—not here, all arranged and classified, with numbers pasted on them. If I were a man, I should be an explorer, or maybe a discoverer of new lands—places where no one had ever been before." She turned to him eagerly, "Why don't you become an explorer, and find old cities or—or the North Pole, or something?"
Mr. Weatherby, who was studying a fine scarab, nodded.
"I have thought of it, I believe. I think the idea appealed to me once. But, don't you see, it takes a kind of genius for those things. Discoverers are born, I imagine, as well as poets. Besides"—he lowered his voice to a pitch that was meant for tenderness—"at the North Pole I should be so far from you—unless," he added, reflectively, "we went there on our wedding journey."