"Thank God!" Marian cried unexpectedly. "It is a relief to find even a small defect in that intellectual armor of yours! Philip, you are a humbug, and you deceive no one but yourself! It is not solitude which you love, it is not friendship which you despise; it is simply that you have made a virtue out of a condition which exists because you don't know how to change it. Let me help you now."
"How can the leopard change his spots?" he demanded incredulously.
"Go back with us when we sail for New York week after next. Leave things here just as they are, and keep this wonderful spot as a retreat when life becomes too strenuous. Harry and I will return here with you if you wish us to, and will introduce so many serpents into your Garden of Eden that you'll relegate us to the cliff while you take refuge in your library. But between now and that time go back with us into that life which is your life. Place yourself where you can feel the competition of what goes on about you. Try pushing against the current, and learn the joy of contact with something which opposes. Study the people around you, and make friends—it's not too late, with your splendid personality and with me to show you how. Come and get acquainted with your namesake. Help him to learn from you what you can teach him better than any one I know, and learn from him what his youthfulness can teach you. Will you do it, Philip? Will you let this wonderful work you've done here be the means and not the end? Will you put your accomplishments where they can be of value, instead of hoarding them, as a miser does his gold?"
He stood watching her wonderful animation as she spoke with a conviction which swept him off his feet. In the past she had listened to him, and he could but be conscious of the domination which his mind had held over hers; now he knew their positions to be reversed. Was this what the world had given her? And the boy—Philip, named after him. Why was it that the lessons he had taught himself during all these years proved so inadequate to combat the yearning which he felt within him?
Marian was not slow to sense the conflict in his heart, nor to follow up her advantage.
"What have you really accomplished, Philip?" she asked quietly. "Be generous in sharing your splendid development with us."
"I could not give this up," he protested.
"Of course you couldn't, and you should not," she assented. "Give up nothing, but simply add to what you have by assimilating from others. I want you to know my husband, my children, and my friends, and I want them to know you. Say that you will return with us, Philip."
He gazed at her helplessly, then turned his head aside. The emotion against which he had fought for twenty years had escaped from his control, and he was ashamed that another should see what he knew his face betrayed.
"It is impossible," he said, when he was himself again; "it would not be fair."