“You have broken in upon a most interesting discourse,” said Ernest. “Hadria was really coming out.”
This led to a general uproar.
When peace was restored, the conversation went on in desultory fashion. Ernest and Hadria fell apart into a more serious talk. These two had always been “chums,” from the time when they used to play at building houses of bricks on the nursery floor. There was deep and true affection between them.
The day broke into splendour, and the warm rays, rounding the edge of the eastward rock, poured straight into the little temple. Below and around on the cliff-sides, the rich foliage of holly and dwarf oak, ivy, and rowan with its burning berries, was transformed into a mass of warm colour and shining surfaces.
“What always bewilders me,” Hadria said, bending over the balustrade among the ivy, “is the enormous gulf between what might be and what is in human life. Look at the world—life’s most sumptuous stage—and look at life! The one, splendid, exquisite, varied, generous, rich beyond description; the other, poor, thin, dull, monotonous, niggard, distressful—is that necessary?”
“But all lives are not like that,” objected Fred.
“I speak only from my own narrow experience,” said Hadria.
“Oh, she is thinking, as usual, of that unfortunate Mrs. Gordon!” cried Ernest.
“Of her, and the rest of the average, typical sort of people that I know,” Hadria admitted. “I wish to heaven I had a wider knowledge to speak from.”
“If one is to believe what one hears and reads,” said Algitha, “life must be full of sorrow indeed.”