"Why?"
"May I delay obeying you long enough to give my reasons?"
"Yes."
"Because," said he coming up to her, "when people turn away from the world in disgust they generally find worse company in themselves."
"Mr. Carleton!--I would not sit still another minute, if curiosity didn't keep me. I thought solitude was said to be such a corrector?"
"Like a clear atmosphere--an excellent medium if your object is to take an observation of your position--worse than lost if you mean to shut up the windows and burn sickly lights of your own."
"Then according to that one shouldn't seek solitude unless one doesn't want it."
"No," said Mr. Carleton, with that eye of deep meaning to which Constance always rendered involuntary homage,--"every one wants it;--if we do not daily take an observation to find where we are, we are sailing about wildly and do not know whither we are going."
"An observation?" said Constance, understanding part and impatient of not catching the whole of his meaning.
"Yes," he said with a smile of singular fascination,--"I mean, consulting the unerring guides of the way to know where we are and if we are sailing safely and happily in the right direction--otherwise we are in danger of striking upon some rock or of never making the harbour; and in either case, all is lost."