"All England is filled with fools," cried the younger man, desperately. "I could never in the world make them understand me or my motives. I gave it up long ago. I've not told my mother, to save her from a needless sorrow that would be inflicted on her by her friends. They would all flock to her and pester her with their outcry of 'How very extraordinary!' I can hear them and see them now. I tell you, if a man steps out of the beaten track over there—if he attempts to order his own life, marry to please himself, or cut his coat after any pattern other than the ordinary conventional lines,—even the boys on the street will fling stones at him. Her patronizing friends would, at the very least, politely raise their eyebrows. She is proud and sensitive, and any fling at her sons is a blow to her."
"But what—"
"I say I couldn't tell her. I tell you I have been drinking from the cup of happiness. I have drained it to the last drop. My wife is mine. She does not belong to those people over there, to be talked over, and dined over, and all her beauty and fineness overlooked through their monocles—brutes! My mountain flower in her homespun dress—only poets could understand and appreciate her."
"B—but what were you going to do about it?"
"Do about it? I meant to keep her to myself until the right time came. Perhaps in another year bring her here and begin life in a modest way, and let my mother visit us and see for herself. I was planning it out, slowly—but this— You see, Doctor, their ideas are all warped over there. They accept all that custom decrees and have but the one point of view. The true values of life are lost sight of. They have no hilltops like Cassandra's. Only the poets have."
A quizzical smile played about the old man's mouth. He came and laid his arm across David's shoulders, and the act softened the slight sting of his words. "And—you call yourself a poet?"
"Not that," said the young man, humbly, "but I have been learning. I would have scorned to be called a poet until I learned of this girl and her father. I thought I had ideals, and felt my superiority in consequence, until I came down to the beginnings of things with them."
"Her—her father? Why—he's dead—he—"
"And yet through her I have learned of him. I believe he was a man who walked with God, and at Cassandra's side I have trod in his secret places."
"That's right. I'm satisfied now, about her. You're all right, but—but—your mother."