"What part is it that survives?" he asked, a little bitterly. "Why should the new man be cursed with memory? Don't you think that even then there must have been two of me, one struggling against the other—one seeking for the big things, one laying hold of the lower? We are all like that, Edith! Even now I sometimes feel the tug, although it leads in other directions."
"To Garden Green?" she murmured.
"Never that," he answered fiercely, "and you know it. There are lower heights, though, in the most cultured of lives. There are moments of madness, moments that carry one off one's feet, which come alike to the slave and his master. Dear Edith, up here one can talk. It is such a beautiful world. One can open one's eyes, one can breathe, one can look around him. It is the joy of simple things, the real true joy of life which beats in our veins. Do you think that we were made for unhappiness in such a world, Edith?"
"No!" she whispered, faintly.
"There isn't anything so beautiful to me upon God's earth," he continued, "as the love in my heart for you. I wanted to tell you so this evening. I have brought you here to tell you so—to this particular spot. Something tells me that it may be almost our last chance. I left those two whispering upon the lawn. What is it they are planning, I wonder? That man Bomford is no companion for your father. He has given him an idea about me and my story. What is it, I wonder? To rob me, to throw me out, to take my treasure from me by force?"
"You are my father's guest," she reminded him softly. "He will not forget it."
"There are greater things in the world," he went on, "than the obligations of hospitality. There are tides which sweep away the landmarks of nature herself. Your father is thirsty for knowledge. This man Bomford is his friend. There have been more crimes committed in the world for lofty motives than one hears of."
He leaned a little forward. They could see the smoke curling up from the house below, its gardens laid out like patchwork, the low house itself covered with creepers.
"It was an idyll, that," he went on. "Bomford's trail is about the place now, the trail of some poisonous creature. Nothing will ever be the same. I want to remember this last evening. I have looked upon life from the hill tops and I have looked at it along the level ways, but I have seen nothing in it so beautiful, I have felt nothing in it so wonderful, as my love for you. You were a dream to me before, half hidden, only partly realized. Soon you will be a dream to me again. But never, never, dear, since the magic brush painted the blue into the skies, the purple on to the heather, the green on to the grass, the yellow into the gorse, the blue into your eyes, was there any love like mine!"
She leaned towards him. Her fingers were cold and her voice trembled.