"You may be right," she admitted, "yet you dismiss one of the greatest questions in life with a single turn of your tongue. It is given to no one to be infallible. It is even possible that you may be wrong."
"It is possible," Stephen agreed grimly.
"The things in life which are worth while," she continued, looking down into the valley, "are common to all. They do not consist of one thing for one man, another for another. To whom comes the greater share of them—the dweller in the city, or you in your primitive and patriarchal life? You rest your brains, you make the seasons feed you, you work enough to keep your muscles firm, and nature does the rest. She brings the food to your doors, and when your harvest is over your work is done. There are possibilities of rust here, Mr. Strangewey!"
Stephen's smile was almost disdainful.
"Madam," he declared, "you have six or seven million people in London. How many of them live by really creative and honorable work? How many are there of polyglot race—Hebrews, Germans, foreigners of every type, preying upon one another, making false incomes which exist only on paper, living in false luxury, tasting false joys? The sign-post of our lives must be our personal inclinations. Our inclinations—my brother's inclinations and mine—lead us, as they have led my people for hundreds of years, to seek the cleaner things in life and the simpler forms of happiness. If I do not have the pleasure, madam, of seeing you again, permit me to wish you farewell."
He turned and walked away. Louise watched him with very real interest.
"Do you know," she said to John, "there is something which I can only describe as biblical about your brother, something a little like the prophets of the Old Testament, in the way he sees only one issue and clings to it. Are you, too, of his way of thinking?"
"Up to a certain point, I believe I am," he confessed. "I do not think I could ever have lived in the city. I do not think I could ever have been happy in any of the professions."
"Certainly I could not imagine you as a stock-broker or a lawyer. I feel it hard to realize you in any of the ordinary walks of life. Still, you know, the greatest question of all remains unanswered. Are you content just to live and flourish and die? Are there no compelling obligations with which one is born? Do you never feel cramped—in your mind, I mean?—feel that you want to push your way through the clouds into some other life?"
"I feel nearer the clouds here," he answered simply.