"I don't mean that at all," said Imogen; "although I don't fancy that you are interested so deeply, and in so many things, as I am."
"Now, really! Why not? You haven't given me a chance to show you. Of course
I'm not clever."
"I meant nothing petty, like cleverness."
"You mean that I don't take life seriously enough to please you?"
"Not that, exactly. It's that we face in opposite directions, as it were. Life isn't to you what it is to me, it isn't to you such a big, beautiful thing, with so many wonderful vistas in it—such far, high peaks."
She was very grave now, and the gravity, the assurance, and, with them, the sweetness, of this young girl were charming and perplexing to Sir Basil. Girls so assured he had found harsh, disagreeable and, almost always, ugly; they had been the sort of girl one avoided. And girls so lovely had usually been coy and foolish. This girl walked like a queen, looked at one like a philosopher, smiled at one like an angel. He fixed his mind on her last words, rallying his sense of quizzical paternity to meet such disconcerting statements.
"Well, but you are very young; life looks like that—peaks, you know, and vistas, and all the rest—when one is young. You've not had time to find it out, to be disappointed," said Sir Basil.
Imogen's calm eye rested upon him, and even before she spoke he knew that he had made a very false step. It was as if, sunken to the knees in his foolish bog, he stood before her while she replied:
"Ah, it's that that is shallow in you, or, let us say, undeveloped, still to be able to think of life in those terms. They are the thoughts of an unawakened person, and some people, I know, go all through life without awaking. You imagine, I suppose, that I think of life as something that is going to give me happiness, to fulfil sentimental, girlish dreams. You are mistaken. I have known bitter disappointments, bitter losses, bitter shatterings of hope. But life is wonderful and beautiful to me because we can be our best and do our best in it, and for it, if we try. It's an immense adventure of the soul, an adventure that can disappoint only in the frivolous sense you were thinking of. Such joys are not the objects of our quest. One is disappointed with oneself, often, for falling so short of one's vision, and people whom we love and trust may fail us and give us piercing pain; but life, in all its oneness, is good and beautiful if we wake to its deepest reality and give our hearts to the highest that we know."
She spoke sadly, softly, surely, thinking of her own deep wounds, and to speak such words was almost like repeating a familiar lesson,—how often she had heard them on her father's lips,—and Sir Basil listened, while he looked at the golden head, at the white hand stretched out now and then to put aside a branch or sapling—listened with an amazement half baffled and wholly admiring. He had never heard a girl talk like that. He had heard such words before, often, of course, but they had never sounded like this; they seemed fresh, and sparkling with a heavenly dew, spoken so quietly, with such indifference to their effect, such calmness of conviction. The first impression of her, that always hovered near, grew more strongly upon him. There was something heavenly about this girl. It was as though he had heard an angel singing in the woods, and a feeling of humility stole over him. It was usual for Sir Basil, who rarely thought about himself, to feel modest, but very unusual for him to feel humble.