"But why not?" he protested. "I have not the tortuous brain of the
modern politician. I hate cities--the smell of them, the atmosphere of
them, the life in them. The desire for travel is only half born in me.
That may come--I cannot tell. I love the daily work here; I am fond of
horses and dogs. I know every yard of land we own, and I know what it
will produce. It interests me to try experiments--new crops, a new
distribution of crops, new machinery sometimes, new methods of
fertilizing. I love to watch the seasons come and reign and pass. I love
to feel the wind and the sun, and even the rain. All these things have
become a sort of appetite to me. I am afraid," he wound up a little
lamely, "that this is all very badly expressed, but the whole truth of
it is, you see, that I am a man of simple and inherited tastes. I feel
that my life is here, and I live it here and I love it. Why should I go
out like a _Don Quixote_ and search for vague adventures?"

"Because you are a man!" she answered swiftly. "You have a brain and a
soul too big for your life here. You eat and drink, and physically you
flourish, but part of you sleeps because it is shut away from the world
of real things. Don't you sometimes feel it in your very heart that
life, as we were meant to live it, can only be lived among your fellow
men?"

He looked upward, over his shoulder, at the little cluster of
farm-buildings and cottages, and the gray stone church.

"It seems to me," he declared simply, "that the man who tries to live
more than one life fails in both. There is a little cycle of life here,
among our thirty or forty souls, which revolves around my brother and
myself. You would think it stupid and humdrum, because the people are
peasants; but I am not sure that you are right. The elementary things,
you know, are the greatest, and those we have. Our young people fall in
love and marry. The joy of birth comes to our mothers, and the tragedy
of death looms over us all. Some go out into the world, some choose to
remain here. A passer-by may glance upward from the road at our little
hamlet, and wonder what can ever happen in such an out-of-the-way
corner. I think the answer is just what I have told you. Love and
marriage, birth and death happen. These things make life."

Her curiosity now had become merged in an immense interest. She laid her
fingers lightly upon his arm.

"You speak for your people," she said. "That is well. I can understand
their