"Oh, neither! I am very different! They were content with trees and flowers, and humble ways. Was it not Dora who 'dwelt unmarried till her death?' I shall not do that. I shall marry and fly from the country-side. I can live among people in the city."
"What! cannot you live the truest life where wind, and rain, and water-fall, and birds make music? the flowers mark the sweet procession of seasons—all is calm, and security, and innocence."
"Tell me," said Doris, bending forward, glee in her sapphire eyes, her small hand thrilling him as she touched his arm; "tell me, poet, are you content? Do you not long for fame? To sway your fellows, to be rich, to make money?"
"Oh, money is the lowest of all objects. What is money to love?" demanded Earle.
"Money, just as metal, may be a low object, but money as money, as getting what we want most, is a high object. Think of what it can buy. Think of gorgeous pictures lighting your walls with beauty, of flashing jewels and gleaming marbles, of many-fountained gardens, of homes fit to live in, not stuffy little farm-houses, with windows under the eaves. Tell me, are you content? Will you live and die a farmer? Is not this money a thing worth winning to lay at the feet of love? Will you not spread the wings of your soul for a wider life? Have you not ambition?"
"Yes!" cried Earle; "I have ambition."
The dimpling smile showed the shining pearly line of little teeth; the soft fingers of the little hand touched his hand as she withdrew them; and, leaning back against her oak tree, she laughed joyously:
"I have found a fellow-sinner."
"Ambition can be noble, rather than evil, and to aspire is not to sin. Who could help being ambitious, with you as the apostle of ambition? You enforce with your beauty each word that you utter!"
"You think me beautiful?" said Circe, in sweetest wonderment, as if she had not studied dress, look, pose, gesture, minutely to enhance her wonderful and rich endowments of nature.