There was little need for Liddiard to tell her how every precedent in life opposed the thing she had set herself to do. And once John had come in contact with life itself, how could she be sure the pressure of his thoughts would not be tinctured with regret. What more bitter inheritance, what more accusing testimony of her failure than that?
Not always a faun could she keep him. Not always with a dryad could he play in happy meadows. The world it seemed had grown too old, too worn, for that. Something must happen to stir human nature to its depths and rearrange the threadbare and accepted values before it could ever be young again.
Here she knew she was but dreaming dreams. There lay the abyss before her. Nothing in the wildest flights of her imagination she could conceive was able to fill its depths or make a bridge, however treacherous, to span it.
He had said it. These things were unanswerable in a practical world; and in a practical world there was no true sense of vision. The possessions of men had become their limitations. Beyond them and the ease they brought to the few years that were theirs, they could not see.
The vision she had had was but a glimpse; a world beyond, not a world about her. As Liddiard watched her, she sank her head upon her knees. He thought she had turned to tears. But a heart, breaking, turns to that water that does not flow out of the eyes.
He thought she had turned to weeping and in genuine sympathy laid his hand gently on her arm. And this was the spear thrust that set free the water from the gash his touching hand made in her side.
She drew away and lifted her head and looked at him.
"You're strangling all the joy in the world," she said.
III
There came the sound of a voice through the willow trees, across the other side of the stream. It was a sturdy voice, high and ringing with encouragement.