She shook her head. Perhaps a little of the sadness of my mood had after all found its way into my tone, for she looked at me with the shadow of a reproach in her deep blue eyes, a faint tenderness which seemed to me more beautiful than anything I had ever seen.
"I do not think that I like your allegory, Arnold," she said. "After all, the gardens are the nursery of life, are they not? The great things of the world are all outside."
I held my breath for a moment in amazement. Since when had thoughts like this come to her? I knew then that the days of her childhood were numbered indeed, that, underneath the fresh joyous grace of her delightful youth, the woman's instincts were stirring. And I was afraid!
"The great things, Isobel," I said slowly, "look very fine from a distance, but the power of accomplishment is not given to all of us. Every triumph and every success has its reverse side, its sorrowful side. For instance, the whole judgment of the world is by comparison. A great picture which brings fame to a man eclipses the work and lessens the reputation of another. A successful book takes not a place of its own, but the place of another man's work who must needs suffer for your success. Life is a battle truly enough, but it is always civil war, the striving of humanity against itself. That is why what looks so great to you from behind the hedge may seem a very hollow thing when you have won the power to call it your own."
She looked at me as though wondering how far I were in earnest.
"I think," she said, smiling, "that you are trying to confuse me. Of course, I have not thought much about such things, but when I am a little older, if there was anything I could do I should simply try to do it in the best possible way, and I should feel that I was doing what was right. There is room for a great many people in the world, Arnold—a great many novelists and a great many artists and a great many thinkers! Some of us must be content with lesser places. I for one!..."
I walked home with Allan, and I spoke to him seriously.
"There is a duty before us," I said, "which up to now we have shirked. The time has come when we must undertake it in earnest."
"You mean?"
"We must abandon our negative attitude. Isobel comes, I am very sure, from no ordinary people. We must find out her place in life and restore her to it. She is a child no longer. It is not fitting that she should stay with us."