Leigh lifted his head and laughed, but the laugh was not altogether a happy one. "You present me to myself in a new light," he answered. "So far I have only accomplished the feat of reaching the first rung of the ladder which I used to think I would have climbed by this time. But yes, I have been back there recently, and found everything changed. In fact, the West is a symbol of mutation. The marshlands have been filled in; streets extend across the places where I used to go for cat-tails; they have no more batrachian concerts there now. The only reminder of that earlier characteristic of the place is a huge green frog worked out in a marble mosaic on the floor of the new court house. That is the seal of my native town."
By mere accident Leigh had made that first important step in love's progress; he had succeeded in arousing a personal interest.
"It's quite charming," she commented, "and not lacking in an element of poetry, either."
"Poetry," he echoed, inspired by her appreciation. "It's just those apparently common things that are so full of it, but the poets don't see it, or else they don't quite dare to give it expression. The conventions of the art are too overpowering. Take the railroad train, for example, which stands to most of us for convenience combined with a certain measure of discomfort. There 's nothing more stimulating to the imagination than the whistle of a locomotive in the distance at night, though perhaps only the poor, to whom travel is a luxury, appreciate to the full its invitation and the suggestion of adventure. Working up from one stratum to another through difficulties, they are attended by a growing wonder as the world expands before them. But to have all experiences open to you from the first by the power of wealth, such as travel and theatres, for example, is the real misfortune of birth. The curiosity of the rich is gratified before it is stimulated by denial. Then what is left to them?"
"Ennui," she answered simply.
"What a blessing it is, then," he went on, "to have no time for that emotion, or rather, lack of emotion. I believe that if I had been born rich, I should have been ruined long before this; but I set myself a long road to travel, a road that reaches, in fact"—he made a wide upward gesture—"to the stars."
"Now what is it," he continued, after a pause, "that makes Warwick so uninspiring, in spite of its obvious charm? Is n't it the spiritual stagnation that comes with wealth and aristocracy? One reads it in the very faces of the people, and recognises it in the things they think worth while. It doesn't need a long observation to discover this. A stranger takes in the impression with his first breath here. Like the first glance at a new face, it reveals the truth. Afterward you get accustomed to an unprepossessing face, and forget what you first thought of it. In much the same way, I suppose, a man could become hypnotised and drugged by the atmosphere of Warwick. All this is in the nature of an explanation of what I meant this afternoon by my denunciation of the place."
She stood silently looking down into the pool from which arose the sound that had brought them to this point. It was evident that she felt no temptation now to indulge in one of those retorts that came so easily to her tongue. Leigh had appealed to her imagination, a thing which the modern man more rarely succeeds in doing with a woman than his predecessor who wore gay garments and rode a caparisoned steed in the lists. Besides, his earnestness had given his thought, though it was by no means a new one, his own personal stamp, and won its acceptance. Deeper than these causes, he had expressed her own convictions.
"A denunciation," he continued shrewdly, "with which you sympathised."
"One must do something," she said, with a little gesture of despair, "or die of suffocation."