"Sharing your views?" he asked, smiling in his turn.
"Lassie will tell you," she repeated.
"Alva," the man said suddenly, earnestly, "don't teach her too many ideals. We are mortal, and life is a real thing."
"I understood that perfectly," she replied; "but the world is not immortal and immortality is a real thing, too. A desirable thing, too."
"To be achieved by working on the mortal plane, remember."
"I have worked all my life upon the mortal plane; I shall be back there next summer, you know. Yet Lassie has learned to see only beauty in my immortal winter to be between."
"Ah, there is your error," said Ingram; "you expect to live this winter and return to your old life in the summer. But that's something that you never will be able to do."
"What do you mean?"
"You won't be able to go back next summer."
She looked at him sadly. "But I shall have to go back next summer," she said; "do not deceive yourself as to that. And now excuse me, I want to speak to her before she goes."