Pauline shook her head.
“We have come,” she said, “because we care for him, because we were anxious to know whether he had come to his own. We will go away the moment you send us.”
“You will have some tea,” Naudheim growled, a little more graciously. “Saton, man, be hospitable. It is goat’s milk, and none too sweet at that, and I won’t answer for the butter.”
Saton spoke little. Pauline was content to watch him. They drank tea out of thick china cups, but over their conversation there was always a certain reserve. Naudheim listened and watched, like a mother jealous of strangers who might rob her of her young. After tea, however, he disappeared from the room for a few moments, and Rochester walked toward the window.
“It is very good of you to come, Pauline,” Saton said. “I shall work all the better for this little glimpse of you.”
“Will the work,” she asked softly, “never be done?”
He shook his head.
“Why should it? One passes from field to field, and our lives are not long enough, nor our brains great enough, to reach the place where we may call halt.”
“Do you mean,” she asked, “that you will live here all your days?”
“Why not?” he answered. “I have tried other things, and you know what they made of me. If I live here till I am as old as Naudheim, I shall only be suffering a just penance.”