“Likewise,” chanted Martin:
“‘Après le plaisir vient la peine;
Après la peine, le bonheur!’”
“But it’s a high price,” she commented, simply.
“It’s worth it,” asserted Martin.
“You have not sat enough upon towers!” She looked at him a moment, with a half smile, and then across the plain again. “No; it’s not because this place is untrampled that I like to come here. But you can see over everybody’s walls. You get some kind of proportion. And I like to think of all the people—under these roofs, in that haze. Common life is what pleases me, and common people—simple people. Our ideas for ourselves are so single. They shut out so much that might be, and they hardly ever come out right. Our lives are generally made up of two or three real days, with years of waiting and remembering between. Common lives and common things are better, just as they happen, from day to day.”
Martin studied her, half wondering what lay behind her words and half taken by the charm of her slow inflection. She turned under his eyes; and he asked at random:
“Do you come here often, for the tower?”
“Not very. I have one of my own, near Naples, where I have sat much and seen many things.”
“Think of having a tower near Naples! And I have to sail in a month!”