"Don't you know the preliminary steps, Mr. Landholm?"
He looked very grave again.
"Not clearly enough to tell you. In general, I know she would say there is a narrow way to be passed through before the treasures of truth, or its fair prospects, can be arrived at; but I have never gone that way myself and I cannot point out the way-marks."
"Are you referring to the narrow gate spoken of in the Bible?"
"To the same."
"Then you are getting upon what I do not understand," said
Elizabeth.
They had mounted the steps of No. 11, and were waiting for the door to be opened. They waited silently till it was done, and then parted with only a 'good night.' Elizabeth did not ask him in, and it hardly occurred to Winthrop to wonder that she did not.
Mr. Landholm read no classics that night. Neither law. Neither, which may seem more strange, did he consult his Book of books at all. He busied himself, not exactly with the study of the human mind, but of two human minds, — which, though at first sight it may seem an enlargement of the subject, is in fact rather a contracted view of the same.
CHAPTER XXII.
Sir Toby. Do not our lives consist of the four elements? Sir And. 'Faith, so they say, but, I think, it rather consists of eating and drinking. TWELFTH NIGHT.