“Poor old Nell,” said Kit. “You are mixed up with a whole lot that you’d be better without. I’m glad that you get sips of the Fountain of Youth here. I seem to hate worldliness, do you know it? Now I know people here, Antony Paul and his fine little wife and that wife’s family; oh, you saw the child, little Anne, yesterday! They’re the most unworldly people——”
“Oh, well, you know, Kit, one mustn’t go to extremes,” interrupted Helen. “It’s a good thing to get the finish and knowledge given by contact with the world. I don’t like unworldliness. That’s only another name for stupidity. It’s no better than a badly furnished room, or poor music, or fake art, or any other ignorance. My idea is to conquer the world, to get the best it has to give you and rise superior to it; to be—what’s that trite way of putting it?—in it but not of it? Well, that’s the thing. I’d not give up the sense of power, moulding things and people, being one of the worth-while things in the world, for—well, for the world!”
She paused to laugh at herself, but went on: “Don’t you think, Kit, that what my father can do, and what he can put me into the way of doing, is great? And what’s the matter with using one’s advantages to improve things? Isn’t that quite possible, and isn’t that a worthy ambition? Frumpy folk can’t do anything for the keen old world; it knows a good thing when it sees it. You may be sure, Christopher, my son, that half the unworldliness is self-delusion. It is lazy-mindedness, or else an instinct that warns of unfitness for the world; that the person can’t play a part in it. He thinks he’s superior and renouncing; in reality, he’s inferior and thrown out.”
“Honest, Helen, that’s true!” cried Kit; he looked at Helen with cordial admiration. “I often wonder if I’m not too commonplace to amount to a whole lot, and so I think that I don’t want to make a splash. I never saw this side of you; that you cared to help and all that. You are a wonder, Nell; I take off my hat to you. There isn’t much that you couldn’t do or be. I’m one of your ‛frumpy folk’ and couldn’t keep step with you.”
Helen drew up her horse beside his; she leaned toward him with her bright hair close to his face, her beauty within his reach.
“Ah, Kit,” she said, softly, “you are not frumpy! You are a dear, humble-minded fellow; all truly great men are humble; they are simpler than women. There is nothing that you might not do, if you would see yourself as your friends see you. Let me inspire you to self-confidence! Let me feel that when you are a man honoured by others for your benefits to the world, your achievements—for I am sure, Kit, that you could be a power for good with your clear vision and your simple incorruptibility—let me feel that I kindled in you the desire that bore such fruit. Even though after all is said I am but a pretty girl, yet I am one that can love what is worth loving though you think me only a shallow, vain creature!”
Helen’s face bent forward; she dropped her lids over her eyes as if to hide their flame, or their tears; her voice thrilled, her beautifully trained, silvery voice.
Kit’s hand went out as if to draw her to him; the space between them was slight. He flushed and quivered to her beauty as to her emotion. Then there arose before him a small figure, simply clad; a low, broad brow and beneath it steady eyes of brown, like a fire on a home hearth, and sweet, firm lips moved to let a soft alto voice say in memory to him again:
“It would be a pity for you to fail with your life, because you can use it well if you follow your instincts. And what is counted gain is often tragic failure.”
Kit straightened himself in his saddle.