She turned her head away with a hand wave that seemed to dismiss an argument familiar and outworn.
"I know—but I must do what I can."
He faced her with a sudden insistent energy.
"Come away, Nell—come farther off. You're too close to the ugly things now—you lose the perspective. Come away—and come with me, won't you, Nell? Come away and live. I must say it—I must ask it—come!"
He read the inexorable in the lift of her head.
"I understand, Alden—and I thank you—but no." She glanced across at him and continued more lightly, "I wasn't meant to go far off—to go above timber line, as Mr. Ewing would say."
He felt bitterness rising in him at her mention of the name, but he laughed it away.
"You'll always do the hardest thing, Nell. I know that. But I—well, one of the old heathen—Heraclitus, wasn't it?—remarked that the ass, after all, would have his thistles rather than much fine gold."
She laughed. "Dad would say, the more ass he, if he wouldn't."
"I know—we'd rather have our own particular thistles, each of us. But to live a day or two before we die, Nell! Come with me—stop trying to mount the whirlwind. You'll only be thrown."