"Then let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Is that the end of your experience?" asked Leonora, gloomily.
"Oh—well—if you put it so. Only if you do not eat and drink too much, you may possibly not die until the day after to-morrow."
"Or you may spend your life in cooking the dinner, and die before it is served?" suggested Leonora.
"Or anything—what carnal similes!" laughed Batiscombe. "But they are very apt for any one who cares for eating. If that is really an important enjoyment, it may as well stand as the type."
"Exactly—'if.' I am sure you do not think it is, nor that any material satisfaction can possibly stand as a type, nor that we should enjoy to-day without thought of to-morrow, nor a great many other things you have said." She watched him as she spoke, and he liked to feel her eyes on him.
"No," he answered, "you are quite right. I do not think those things at all. But I am sure I generally do them," he added, smiling.
"But what do you think—really? Is there anything really high and noble in the world? It all seems so little and so hollow, sometimes."
She sighed, thinking how, formerly, she had said such things speculatively, and for the sake of raising an argument with her friends. Batiscombe turned on the stone seat, so that he faced her.
"Of course there are high and noble things in the world," he answered. "It is when you look into the small workings of the mind and soul, as you have been making me do, that you lose sight of the great ones. Material nature is most interesting under a microscope, and generally most beautiful in great masses at a distance. But if you walk close to the grandest cliff in nature, and flatten your face against it, and hold your eye half an inch from the rock, the grandeur and the beauty are all gone, and without a microscope wherewith to examine your particular point, you will find the close inspection tiresome after a time. There is no microscope for the soul, any more than for the heart, or the mind. You gain nothing by looking too closely at it. It is ten to one that you hit upon a diseased spot for your examination. It may amuse you for a time to study other people's souls, because you can hardly get so near to them as to lose all impression of the whole, as you can with yourself. What does it matter what you know about your soul, so long as you do what is right?"
"That sounds true," said Leonora, "but I suppose there is something wrong about it."