“Oh, after that, honour and glory and wealth and power and—the happy ending. Doesn’t it sound nice?”
“Ye—es, in a way. But,” he added with energy, “it won’t come off. No, not the aerophones, they are right enough I believe, but all the rest of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is too much. ‘Happy endings’ don’t come off. The happiness lies in the struggle, you know,—an old saying, but quite true. Afterwards something intervenes.”
“To have struggled happily and successfully is happiness in itself. Whatever comes afterwards nothing can take that away. ‘I have done something; it is good; it cannot be changed; it is a stone built for ever in the pyramid of beauty, or knowledge, or advancement.’ What can man hope to say more at the last, and how few live to say it, to say it truly? You will leave a great name behind you, Mr. Monk.”
“I shall leave my work; that is enough for me,” he answered.
For a while they walked in silence; then some thought struck him, and he stopped to ask:
“Why did Layard come to the Dead Church to-day? He said that he was going home, and it isn’t on his road.”
Stella turned her head, but, even in that faint light, not quickly enough to prevent him seeing a sudden flush change the pallor of her face to the rich colour of her lips.
“To call, I suppose; or,” correcting herself, “perhaps from curiosity.”