Oh, she understood fast enough. She could understand the nature that went hot-foot to the vital issue, disregarding side lights on it, not from callousness, but merely because they sank into insignificance before the one big thought.
“Well?” demanded David.
“Oh,” smiled Elizabeth, “are you asking me to be judge? Well, at all events, you must be jury. If I sum up, you’ve got to weigh the case and give the casting vote, remember.”
She stopped, collecting her thoughts.
“Well,” she said after a minute, “you’ll allow that now you are seeing matters from a different standpoint. You could—at least you think you could—say to this imaginary son of yours: ‘My dear boy, legally I had the possession in my hands. Morally there was sufficient ground for me to give it up if I chose.’ You see I am not driving home the moral necessity of renouncement. I am leaving a choice.”
“I see,” smiled David.
“Well,” pursued Elizabeth, “given the freedom in that choice, we find the matter a trifle less complicated. Let’s deal first with the purely sensible side. Could you get used to the restrictions you fancy the possession would entail? Is the possession worth it?”
“In a measure it is,” said David, answering the last question first. “It isn’t the title, or the place for the grandeur of the thing. It’s the linking up with the past. That holds me,—the oldness of it. I suppose, too, I could get used to the restrictions in time.”
“Well,” said Elizabeth slowly, “now we come to the more subtle aspect of affairs. You’ve an idea that the possession may hinder you in your quest. You must grant the quest real. I know it is. Now, I can’t see the smallest reason why it should prevent you actually finding what you seek. It couldn’t. But I fancy,” went on Elizabeth thoughtfully, “that there may be two reasons for that idea of yours. The first, and most obvious, seems that there is probably a bigger moral obligation to give up the possession than appears on the surface of things, in fact that the possession isn’t yours, and that this queer idea is a sort of inner voice telling you so. The other reason—well, that’s only an idea of mine. You can leave it at the first reason.”
“Why don’t you tell me the second reason?” demanded David.