"Yes, certainly; but you speak as if"——
"As if I believed in it!" said Dolly merrily. "You speak as if you didn't."
"I do, I assure you; but what is fame then?"
"Nothing at all," said Dolly.—"Just nothing at all; if you mean people's admiration or applause given when we have gone beyond reach of it."
"Beyond reach of it!" said Lawrence, echoing her words again. "Miss Dolly, do you think it is no use to have one's name honoured by all the world for ages after we have lived?"
"Very good for the world," said Dolly, with a spice of amusement visible again.
"And nothing to the man?"
"What should it be to the man?" said Dolly, seriously enough now. "Mr. St. Leger, when a man has got beyond this world with its little cares and interests, there will be just one question for him,—whether he has done what God put him here to do; and there will be just one word of praise that he will care about,—the 'Well done!'—if he may have it,—from those lips."
Dolly began quietly, but her colour flushed and her lip trembled as she went on, and her eye sparkled through a sudden veil of tears. Lawrence was silenced by admiration, and almost forgot what they were talking about.
"But don't you think," he began again, as Dolly moved towards the church door, "that the one thing—I mean, the praise here,—will be a sort of guaranty for the praise there?"