her eyes straight on his. Another second and
she had passed through the gate, and was walking fast along the road
homewards alone. She heard behind her the sound of wheels, and an open
carriage overtook her. It was Dr. Turnbull's, and of course he stopped.

"Miss Furze, you are taking a long walk."

She told him she had been to see Phoebe, and of her death.

"You must be very tired: you must come with me." She would have
preferred solitude, but he insisted on her accompanying him, and she
consented.

"I believe I saw Mr. Cardew in the meadow: I have just called on his
wife."

"Is she ill?"

"Yes, not seriously, I hope. You know Mr. Cardew?"

"Yes, a little. I have heard him preach, and have been to his house when
I was living at Abchurch."

"A remarkable man in many ways, and yet not a man whom I much admire. He
thinks a good deal, and when I am in company with him I am unaccountably
stimulated, but his thinking is not directed upon life. My notion is
that our intellect is intended to solve real difficulties which confront
us, and that all intellectual exercise upon what does not concern us is
worse than foolish. My brain finds quite enough to do in contriving how
to remove actual hard obstacles which lie in the way of other people's
happiness and my own."

"His difficulties may be different from yours."

"Certainly, but they are to a great extent artificial, and all the time
spent upon them is so much withdrawn from the others which are real. He
goes out into the fields reading endless books, containing records of
persons in various situations. He is not like any one of those persons,
and he never will be in any one of those situations. The situation in
which he found himself that morning at home, or that in which a poor
neighbour found himself, is that which to him is important. It is a
pernicious consequence of the sole study of extraordinary people that the
customary standards of human action are deposed, and other standards
peculiar to peculiar creatures under peculiar circumstances are set up. I
have known Cardew do very curious things at times. I do not believe for
one moment he thought he was doing wrong, but nevertheless, if any other
man had done them, I should have had nothing more to say to him."

"Perhaps he ought to have his own rules. He may not be constituted as we
are."

"My dear Miss Furze, as a physician, let me give you one word of solemn
counsel. Nothing is more dange