They strolled slowly back into the garden and settled themselves upon a stone seat which commanded a superb view of the surrounding country. It was her heart rather than her eyes which controlled Marian now, and she saw before her nothing but this man-grown boy, who at an earlier time in her life had exercised an absorbing influence upon her. It was her heart, still loyal to the friendship which remained, struggling to find the right word which should start in motion the machinery to bring the latent potentiality into action.
"Your ideas are no different now than then," she said at length, "except that time has intensified them. You used to compare what you found in books with what you found in life, to the distinct disadvantage of the realities."
"Yes," Hamlen admitted; "and it is just as true to-day."
"Do you know why?" she demanded pointedly.
"Because life is so full of insincerity."
"No," she protested, "you are wrong, absolutely wrong. The real reason lies in you. You have always given of yourself in your intellectual pursuits, and have received in kind. In your relations with life you have never given of yourself, and again you have received in kind. Philip, Philip! why don't you study yourself as you do your books, and even now learn the lesson you need to know?"
"Was that why—back there—" he began.
She paused for a moment as the conversation took her back to the earlier days.
"You thought me changeable," she evaded the question; "but for that you yourself were responsible. You drew me to you with irresistible force, then repelled me by your intolerance of all those lighter interests which were natural to youth of our age. Your letters stimulated my ambition, your conversation stirred in me all that was best; but as soon as we were separated I felt a lack which for a long time I was unable to understand."
"Why did you come," he asked, "to awaken these memories I have tried so hard to forget?" but she seemed not to hear him.