“Perhaps I don’t,” he answered; “only sometimes it seems to me your voice tells me though your words do not.”

“My voice?”

“Yes; it is full of notes like a violin, and speaks more than words.  I suppose all voices have many notes really, but people do not often use them; they use only a few.  You use many; that is why I like to listen to you when you talk to my parents, or any one.  It is like a master playing on an instrument; you make simple words mean much, more than I understand sometimes; you can caress and you can laugh with your voice; I have heard you do it when I have not been able to understand what you caress, or at what you laugh, any more than an ignorant person can understand what the violin says, although he may enjoy to hear it.  To-night you do not caress or laugh; there is something black in your thoughts.”

“That is human nature, as you say,” Julia said shortly, ignoring the comment on her voice.  “Human nature is a hateful, ugly thing; there is no use in thinking about it.”

“It has certainly fallen,” Joost allowed; “but I have sometimes thought perhaps, if it were not so, it would be a little—­a very little—­monotonous.”

“You would not find it dull,” Julia told him.  “I believe you would not have got on very well in the Garden of Eden, except that, since all the herbs grew after their own kind, there would be no opportunity to hybridise them.”

But the mystery of production and generation, even in the vegetable world, was not a subject that modesty permitted Joost to discuss with a girl.  His manner showed it, to her impatient annoyance, as he hastily introduced another aspect of man’s first estate.  “If we were not fallen,” he added, “we should have no opportunity to rise.  That, indeed, would be a loss; is it not the struggle which makes the grand and fine characters which we admire?”

“I don’t admire them,” Julia returned; “I admire the people who are born good, because they are a miracle.”

He stopped to unfasten the gate; it did not occur to him that she was thinking of himself.

“I cannot agree with you,” he said, as they went up the drive together.  “Rather, I admire those who have fought temptation, who are strong, who know and understand and have conquered; they inspire me to try and follow.  What inspiration is there in the other?  Consider Miss Denah, for an example; she has perhaps never wanted to do more wrong than to take her mother’s prunes, but is there inspiration in her?  She is as soft and as kind as a feather pillow, and as inspiring.  But you—­you told me once you were bad; I did not believe you; I did not understand, but now I know your meaning.  You have it in your power to be bad or to be good; you know which is which, for you have seen badness, and know it as men who live see it.  You have fought with it and conquered; you have struggled, you do struggle, you have strength in you.  That is why you are like a lantern that is sometimes bright and sometimes dim, but always a beacon.”