"Do you suppose,", said the young man, stooping to pick one or two, "that they are less sweet to me than to you?"
"Why should they be?"
"Because, religion is the most precious thing in the world to me; and by your rule, I must be disgusted with the world, and all sweet things have lost their savour."
He spoke with quiet gravity, and Eleanor's eye went to his face with a bright glance of inquiry. It came back with no change of opinion.
"You don't convert me," she said. "I do not know what you have given up for religion, so I cannot judge. But all the other people I ever saw, grew religious only because they had lost all care about everything else."
"I wonder how that discontented old soldier found himself, when he got into these solitudes?" said the young man, with a smile of his own then. It was sweet, and a little arch, and withal harmonised completely with the ordinary gravity of his face, not denying it at all. Eleanor looked, once and again, with some curiosity, but the smile passed away as quietly as it had come.
"The solitude was not this solitude then."
"O no, it was very wild."
"These were Augustine canons, were they not?"
"Who?"