“Maybe. But nothing to compare with Scandinavia or any of the Middle European countries. Why worship a past so lacking in original pith? Of course Jefferson had it. Thoreau had it. Yes, here and there. But right here, in Willard, the most inventive man we ever had around invented a spindle for machine weaving. And the greatest statesman, I suppose, was down the road a piece in Hillsborough—Franklin Pierce.”

Eben flung himself down in his chair, his eyes twinkling with savage glee.

“I ask you! Just about the dullest President ever elected—he could hardly wait to get home again from Washington.”

“I see no flaw in loving one’s home,” Christina flashed out. “You chose to come home yourself.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “I did—for Olive. A hell of a lot of people come home to Willard to die, that’s a fact. But how many come here to live, I ask you? City people, maybe—people who bring their books and their ideas with them.”

“Americans, I suppose, are pragmatists, Eben.”

“What I hate,” he said, “is the awful sentimentality about it all. I don’t look at the broken-down stone walls with admiration; it makes me sick to think of all that hard work for nothing—fields grown over to brush in fifty years or less. What was it all for?”

“To make a person like you, maybe,” Christina said.

It was moving to see how much this old man cared. Here, living alone on the top of a hill, he was still wanting to change the very heart of the matter.

“What am I? Nothing much, I can tell you. I had it in me to move mountains … ah, Christina,”—he looked over at her again, but this time the look was tender—“what I could have done with you at my side!”

“What makes you think so?” she countered at once, for this was simply not the truth, she felt. “We did nothing but torture each other, Eben.”

“You would have made me spur my horse. Don’t misunderstand,” he added, seeing her grow tense and half rise as if to go. “My marriage was just about perfect, if one thinks of happiness. Just as yours, I expect, may have been. I’m talking about challenge—you challenged me very deep down.”

“It’s all so long ago, Eben. Please, let it lie there.”

“Like some ship full of gold and mystery at the bottom of the ocean in my mind,” he murmured.

“In spite of your sharp edge, what a romantic you are!” And now Christina did get up, for she was suddenly anxious about Cornelius. She had stayed far too long. “I have to go, Eben.”

“Very well,” he said testily, and added, “Where is that cat? I need some comfort.”