It was a long time before they tore themselves away, and then they did not go far. They sat down by some stones outside the Gaard enclosure, still talking about Peer Gynt.
"The poem always stirs me," said Clifford. "I know nothing in literature which ever took a greater hold on me. It may be partly because Knutty taught me to know and understand the Northern mind. But the more I read it, the more I see that it is not typical of the Northern temperament only. Peer Gynt stands for us all, whether we hail from the North, the South, the East, the West; for all of us who cover up realities with fantasies."
"But do we not all have to help ourselves with make-believe, more or less?" Katharine said. "If we went through life doing nothing but facing facts, we should be intolerable to ourselves and other people. Surely now and then we need to rest on fantasy?"
She was silent a moment, and then went on:
"We make a fantastic picture to ourselves that we are wanted in the world, that we have work to do, a call to answer, things and people needing us, and us only. If we did not do that where should we be?"
He turned to her suddenly:
"Have you felt that too?" he said.
"Yes," she answered.
"So have I," he said.
"But you had, and have always had, your work," Katharine said, "your own definite career, which no one, nothing, could take from you."