my faculties and energies, such as they were, could continue thus unused.  And I had, too, in my mind that other scene which I had beheld, of how the boy was withdrawn from the two old people in the other valley.  Was it always thus, I wondered?  Was it so, that souls were drawn upwards in ceaseless pilgrimage, loving and passing on, and leaving in the hearts of those who stayed behind a longing unassuaged, which was presently to draw them onwards from the peace which they loved perhaps too well?

XXX

The serene life came all to an end very suddenly, and with no warning.  One day I had been sitting with Cynthia, and the child was playing on the floor with some little things—­stones, bits of sticks, nuts—­which it had collected.  It was a mysterious game too, accompanied with much impressive talk and gesticulations, much emphatic lecturing of recalcitrant pebbles, with interludes of unaccountable laughter.  We had been watching the child, when Cynthia leaned across to me and said: 

“There is something in your mind, dear, which I cannot quite see into.  It has been there for a long time, and I have not liked to ask you about it.  Won’t you tell me what it is?”

“Yes, of course,” I said; “I will tell you anything I can.”

“It has nothing to do with me,” said Cynthia, “nor with the child; it is about yourself, I think; and it is not altogether a happy thought.”

“It is not unhappy,” I said, “because I am very happy and very well-content.  It is just this, I think.  You know, don’t you, how I was being employed, before I came back, God be praised, to find you?  I was being trained, very carefully and elaborately trained, I won’t say to help people, but to be of use in a way.  Well, I have been wondering why all that was suspended and cut short, just when I seemed to be finishing my training.  I have been much happier here than I ever was before, of course.  Indeed I have been so happy that I have sometimes thought it almost wrong that any one should have so much to enjoy.  But I am puzzled, because the other work seems thrown away.  If you wonder whether I want to leave our life here and go back to the other, of course I do not; but I have felt idle, and like a boy turned down from a high class at school to a low one.”

“That is not very complimentary to me!” said Cynthia, laughing.  “Suppose we say a boy who has been working too hard for his health, and has been given a long holiday?”

“Yes,” I said, “that is better.  It is as if a clerk was told that he need not attend his office, but stay at home; and though it is pleasant enough, he feels as if he ought to be at his work, that he appreciates his home all the more when he can’t sit reading the paper all the morning, and that he does not love his home less, but rather more, because he is away all the day.”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, “that is sensible enough; and I am amazed sometimes that you can be so good and patient about it all—­so content to be so much with me and baby here; but I don’t think it is quite—­what shall I say?—­quite healthy either!”