"Thee's a reckless little fire-eater!" said David, watching his figure as it appeared and disappeared. "How youth trifles with forces whose powers it can neither measure nor control! It was well that I drew a furrow around our cabin or it would have been burned."
His gaze was fixed on the little cabin which seemed to dance and oscillate in the palpitating light; and touched by the analogies and symbols which his penetrating eye discovered in the simple scenes of daily life, he continued to soliloquize, saying, "I should have drawn furrows around my life, before I played with fire!"
"Nay, David," replied Pepeeta, "we should never have played with fire at all."
"How wise we are—too late!"
"Shall we walk any more cautiously when the next untried pathway opens?" he added, somewhat sadly, as he recalled the errors of the past.
"We ought to, if experience has any value," said Pepeeta.
"But has it? Or does it only interpret the past, and not point out the future?"
"Something of both, I think."
"Well we must trust it."
"But not it alone. There is something, better and safer."