"I do," replied Paul. "Of course I know that it is better to build a cathedral than to make a boot; but I think it is better to actually make a boot, than only to dream about building a cathedral. It is far nobler to do great things than small things, I admit; but it is nobler to do small things than to waste all one's time in wanting to do great ones, and to end by doing nothing at all."
"Edgar certainly is a theorist."
"Edgar was born several centuries too late," continued Paul, "in the early days of Christianity he would have been an heroic martyr; in the middle ages, a cloistered saint; just after the Reformation, a consistent Puritan; at the time of the evangelical revival, an ideal early Methodist; but in the nineteenth century—as the intellectual son of a wealthy merchant—there seems no place for him."
"You and I, on the contrary, are very modern, aren't we, Paul? Old-fashioned things—such as wigs and cowls and martyrdoms—would not have been at all becoming to us."
And then the lovers fell to talking about themselves, and forgot Edgar and everybody else in their absorption in the subject under discussion.
CHAPTER XIV.
Expulsion from Eden.
You took my heart and made it beat,
Then trampled it beneath your feet
And watched its cracks and creases.
Unless I make a great mistake,
A heart thus hurt was bound to break;
So say no more, for pity's sake,
But sweep up all the pieces.
When the season was at its height it unfortunately happened that Isabel's evil genius made the suggestion that Paul was growing too headstrong and masterful, and prescribed a good dose of jealousy as a cure for this complaint. Of course Isabel should have known better than to listen to such dangerous promptings, and should forthwith have silenced the lying spirit by her faith in her lover and in his love for her. But no mortal is wise at all times—not even when the mortal happens to be a woman; and this was a time of unwisdom on Isabel's part.
"Paul is too sure of your love," whispered Isabel's evil genius, "now that you are always nice to him he takes your niceness as a matter of course."