"But don't you want to work all the time with your hands or your head, like other men do?" she persisted.
"No," he returned. "To what profit would it be?" There was just a trace of bitterness in his voice.
"But you are strong and a man," she spoke now with unveiled scorn. "You wouldn't be content always to sit up in a mountain cabin by the fire like an old woman."
"Wouldn't I?" he asked. "Why not?" The bitterness was more apparent now, and a shadow had fallen over his face. Pearl realized that, for the moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a recluse in the lonely and isolated mountains.
It was a more or less conventional story. All events which penetrate deeply into human experience are. They are vital and living, because universal; therefore we call them conventional. Seagreave had been left an orphan at an early age, and as he inherited wealth and was born of a line of gentlemen and scholars who had given the world much of service in their day, his material environment offered him no obstacles to be overcome. There were no barriers between him and any normal desires and ambitions, nothing to excite his emulation with suggestions that there were forbidden and therefore infinitely desirable gardens in which he might wander a welcome guest. But life sets a premium on hard knocks. It is usually the bantling which is cast upon the rocks who wins most of the prizes, having acquired in a hard school powers of resistance and endurance.
Seagreave's pleasant experiences continued through youth into manhood. When quite young he became engaged to a charming girl about his own age whom his guardians considered eminently suitable. Among many friendships, he had one so congenial that he fancied no circumstance could arise which could strain or break this tie.
And then, on the very eve of his marriage, his sweetheart had eloped with this friend of his boyhood, and he had not only this wound of the heart to endure, but also the consciousness that he was pilloried as a blind fool by all of his acquaintances.
Consequently he had, in his first young bitterness and heartbreak, taken a sort of gloomy satisfaction in living remote from his fellow beings and burying himself in the wilds, ever strengthening his capacity to do without the ordered and cultivated life of which he had been a part, and which had seemed essential to his well-being; and he had no disillusionizing past experiences to teach him the philosophy that time assuages all griefs, and that it is the part of common sense to take life as you find it.
Gradually his new manner of living, of wandering whither he would without ties or responsibilities, became a habit to him. He lost interest in the world of achievement as well as in the world of manners, but so insidious was this change, this shifting of the point of view, that he had never fully realized it until now when, in some way, some indefinite, goading and not altogether pleasant way, Pearl was bringing a faint realization of his acquired habit of mind home to him.
As Pearl watched him and wondered what remembrance it was that clouded his face, her interest in him increased. "I wonder—" she said, and hesitated.