"Yes, dear."
"Notwithstanding that there are a thousand things to distract my attention. For instance, thoughts. Such as this: that it would be a happy lot if you and I could wander forever side by side through such lovely scenes as this, and in a night so sweet and beautiful."
"But that could not be, Kingsley, dear, and I am not sure whether it would be a happy lot."
"You surprise me, Nansie. Not a happy lot! Our being always together, and always without worry or trouble!"
"In course of time," said Nansie, a slight contraction of her eyelids denoting that she was thinking of what she was saying, "we should grow so used to each other that we should become in each other's eyes little better than animated statues. The monotony of its being always summer, of everything around us being always beautiful, would so weigh upon us that we should lose all sense of the beautiful, and should not be grateful for the sweet air, as we are now, Kingsley. We grow indifferent to things to which we are regularly accustomed. Change produces beauty. You are making me think, you see, and I am almost pretending to be wise."
"Go on, Nansie. I want you to finish, and when you have done I have something to say on an observation you have made, change produces beauty. Now that is a theme profound."
"There is not a season in the year that is not full of sweetness, and that we do not enjoy. If it were always spring the charm of spring would be gone. If it were always summer we should lie down and sleep the days away, and should gradually grow indifferent to the beautiful shapes and colors with which nature adorns the world in the holiday time of the year. Is not autumn charming, with its moons and sunsets and changing colors? And what can be prettier and more suggestive of fairy fancies than winter, in its garb of snow and icicle? There are plenty of bad days in all the seasons, even in the brightest, and it is those which make us enjoy the good all the more. In the last weeks of my dear father's life I learned a great deal from him; it was almost, Kingsley, as if he created a new life within me; and he had the power, in a few words, of unfolding wonders and making you understand them."
"Your dear father," said Kingsley, "was a wise and good man--a poet, too, and could have been almost anything in the artistic world he cared to aspire to. I have no doubt of that, Nansie, dear. And yet he was always poor, and died so."
"It is true, Kingsley. I think it was because he lacked--"
But Nansie paused in sudden alarm, and the word she was about to utter hung upon her tongue. It distressed her, also, that, in what was in her mind as to the reason of her father's worldly failure, the very words which Kingsley used towards himself should have suggested themselves to her.