. She took her passion with the weight of a thing ordained;
she had come upon it where it waited for her, and they had gone on
together, carrying the secret. There might be farther to go, but the way
could never be long.

Finlay said when he came in that the heat for May was extraordinary;
and Advena reminded him that he was in a country where everything was
accomplished quickly, even summer.

"Except perhaps civilization." she added. They were both young enough to
be pleased with cleverness for its specious self.

"Oh, that is slow everywhere," he observed; "but how you can say so,
with every modern improvement staring you in the face--"

"Electric cars and telephones! Oh, I didn't say we hadn't the products,"
and she laughed. "But the thing itself, the precious thing; that never
comes just by wishing, does it? The art of indifference, the art of
choice--"

"If you had refinements in the beginning what would the end be?" he
demanded. "Anaemia."

"Oh, I don't quarrel with the logic of it. I only point out the fact.
To do that is to acquiesce, really. I acquiesce; I have to. But one may
long for the more delicate appreciations that seem to flower where life
has gone on longer."

"I imagine," Finlay said, "that to wish truly and ardently for such
things is to possess them. If you didn't possess them you wouldn't
desire them! As they say, as they say--"

"As they say?"

"About love. Some novelist does. To be conscious in any way toward it is
to be fatally infected."

"What novelist?" Advena asked, with shining interest.

"Some novelist. I--I can't have invented it," he replied, somewhat
confounded. He got up and walked to the window, where it stood open upon
the verandah. "I don't write novels," he said.

"Perhaps you live them," suggested Advena. "I mean, of course," she
added, laughing, "the highest class of fiction."

"Heaven forbid!"

"Why Heaven forbid? You are sensitive to life, and a great deal of it
comes into your scope. You can't see a thing truly without feeling it;
you can't feel it without living it. I don't write novels either, but I
experience--whole publishers' lists."

"That means," he said, smiling, "that your vision is up to date. You
see the things, the kind of things that you read of next day. The modern
moral sophistications--?"

"Don't make me out boastful," she replied. "I often do."

"Mine would be old-fashioned, I am afraid. Old stories of pain"--he
looked out upon the lawn,