She was treating him like a boy again.  He did not like it now because he had felt the sweetness of having her at an advantage.  There are some men who, when they see what they want, stretch out their hands to take it with no more complexity of thought than a baby has when it reaches for a toy.  At other times Alec Trenholme might consider; just then he only knew that he wanted to talk longer with this stately girl who was now retiring.  He arrested her steps by making a random dash at the first question that might detain her.

There was much that, had he known his own mind clearly and how to express it, he would have liked to say to her.  Deep down within him he was questioning whether it was possible always to live under such impulse of fealty to Heaven as had befallen him under the exciting influence of Cameron’s expectation, whether the power of such an hour to sift the good from the evil, the important from the unimportant in life, could in any wise be retained.  But he would have been a wholly different man from what he was had he thought this concisely, or said it aloud.  All that he did was to express superficial curiosity concerning the sentiments of others, and to express it inanely enough.

“Do you think,” he said, “that all those poor people—­my brother’s housekeeper, for instance—­do you think they really thought—­really expected—­”

“I think—­” she said. (She came back to the fence and clasped her hands upon it in her interest.) “Don’t you think, Mr. Trenholme, that a person who is always seeking the Divine Presence, lives in it and has power to make other people know that it is near?  But then, you see, these others fancy they must model their seeking upon the poor vagaries of their teacher.  We are certain that the treasure is found, but—­we mix up things so, things are really so mixed, that we suppose we must shape our ideas upon the earthen vessel that holds it.  I don’t know whether I have said what I mean, or if you understand—­” she stopped.

She was complaining that people will not distinguish between the essence of the heaven-sent message and the accident of form in which it comes.  He did not quite understand, because, if the truth must be told, he had not entirely listened; for although all the spiritual nature that was in him was stimulated by hers, a more outward sympathy asserted itself too; he became moved with admiration and liking for her, and feeling struggled with thought.

“Yes,” he said, dreaming of her alone, “if one could always be with people who are good, it would be easier to do something worth doing.”

Notwithstanding her interest in what she was saying, Sophia began now to see the inclination of his heart for her as one might see a trivial detail of landscape while looking at some absorbing thing, such as a race.  She saw the homage he inwardly proffered more clearly than he saw it himself.  She had seen the same thing before often enough to know it.