"It seems to me," he declared simply, "that the man who tries to live more than one life fails in both. There is a little cycle of life here, among our thirty or forty souls, which revolves around my brother and myself. You would think it stupid and humdrum, because the people are peasants; but I am not sure that you are right. The elementary things, you know, are the greatest, and those we have. Our young people fall in love and marry. The joy of birth comes to our mothers, and the tragedy of death looms over us all. Some go out into the world, some choose to remain here. A passer-by may glance upward from the road at our little hamlet, and wonder what can ever happen in such an out-of-the-way corner. I think the answer is just what I have told you. Love and marriage, birth and death happen. These things make life."
Her curiosity now had become merged in an immense interest. She laid her fingers lightly upon his arm.
"You speak for your people," she said. "That is well. I can understand their simple lives being as absorbing to them as ours are to us. I can imagine how, here among your hills, you can watch as a spectator a cycle of life which contains, as you have pointed out, every element of tragedy and happiness. But you yourself?"
"I am one of them," he answered, "a necessary part of them."
"How you deceive yourself! I am sure you are honest, I am sure you believe what you say, but will you remember what I am going to tell you? The time will come, before very long, when you will feel doubts."
"Doubts about what?"
She smiled enigmatically.
"Oh, they will assert themselves," she assured him, "and you will recognize them when they come. Something will whisper to you in your heart that after all you are not of the same clay as these simple folk—that there is a different mission in the world for a man like you than to play the part of feudal lord over a few peasants. Sooner or later you will come out into the world; and the sooner the better, I think, Mr. John Strangewey, or you will grow like your brother here among your granite hills."
He moved a little uneasily. All the time she was watching him. It seemed to her that she could read the thoughts which were stirring in his brain.
"You would like to say, wouldn't you," she went on, "that your brother's is a useful and an upright life? So it may be, but it is not wide enough or great enough. No one should be content with the things which he can reach. He should climb a little higher, and pluck the riper fruit. Some day you will feel the desire to climb. Something will come to you—in the night, perhaps, or on the bosom of that wind you love so much. It may be a call of music, or it may be a more martial note. Promise me, will you, that when you feel the impulse you won't use all that obstinate will-power of yours to crush it? You will destroy the best part of yourself, if you do. You will give it a chance? Promise!"