t. If you were accustomed to do so, I should not be
expressing my serious thoughts."

The pleasant mood continued with him, and, a smile still on his face,
he asked presently:

"Do you remember telling me that you thought I was wasting my life on
futilities?"

Miriam flushed, and for an instant he thought he had offended her. But
her reply corrected this impression.

"You admitted, I think, that there was much to be said for my view."

"Did I? Well, so there is. But the same conviction may be reached by
very different paths. If we agreed in that one result, I fancy it was
the sole and singular point of concord."

Miriam inquired diffidently:

"Do you still think of most things just as you did then?"

"Of most things, yes."

"You have found no firmer hope in which to work?"

"Hope? I am not sure that I understand you."

He looked her in the face, and she said hurriedly:

"Are you still as far as ever from satisfying yourself? Does your work
bring you nothing but a comparative satisfaction?"

"I am conscious of having progressed an inch or two on the way of
infinity," Mallard replied. "That brings me no nearer to an end."

"But you _have_ a purpose; you follow it steadily. It is much to be
able to say that."

"Do you mean it for consolation?"

"Not in any sense that you need resent," Miriam gave answer, a little
coldly.

"I felt no resentment. But I should like to know what sanction of a
life's effort you look for, now? We talked once, perhaps you remember,
of one kind of work being 'higher' than another. How do you think now
on that subject?"

She made delay before saying:

"It is long since I thought of it at all. I have been too busy learning
the simplest things to trouble about the most difficult."

"To learn, then, has been _your_ object all this time. Let me question
you in turn. Do you find it all-sufficient?"

"No; because I have begun too late. I am doing now what I ought to have
done when I was a girl, and I have always the feeling of being
behindhand."

"But the object, in itself, quite apart from your progress? Is it
enough to study a variety of things, and feel that you make some
progress towards a possible ideal of education? Does this suffice to
your life?"

She answered confusedly:

"I can't know yet; I can't see before me clearly enough."

Mallard was on the point of pressing the question, but he refrained,
and shaped his thought in a different way.

"Do you think of re