Waldo listened. To him the words were no confession, no glimpse into the strong, proud, restless heart of the woman. They were general words with a general application. He looked up into the sparkling sky with dull eyes.

“Yes,” he said; “but when we lie and think, and think, we see that there is nothing worth doing. The universe is so large, and man is so small — — ”

She shook her head quickly.

“But we must not think so far; it is madness, it is a disease. We know that no man’s work is great, and stands forever, Moses is dead, and the prophets, and the books that our grandmothers fed on the mould is eating. Your poet and painter and actor — before the shouts that applaud them have died, their names grow strange, they are milestones that the world has passed. Men have set their mark on mankind forever, as they thought; but time has washed it out as it has washed out mountains and continents.” She raised herself on her elbow. “And what, if we could help mankind, and leave the traces of our work upon it to the end? Mankind is only an ephemeral blossom on the tree of time; there were others before it opened; there will be others after it has fallen. Where was man in the time of the dicynodont, and when hoary monsters wallowed in the mud? Will he be found in the æons that are to come? We are sparks, we are shadows, we are pollen, which the next wind will carry away. We are dying already; it is all a dream.

“I know that thought. When the fever of living is on us, when the desire to become, to know, to do, is driving us mad, we can use it as an anodyne, to still the fever and cool our beating pulses. But it is poison, not a food. If we live on it it will turn our blood to ice; we might as well be dead. We must not, Waldo; I want your life to be beautiful, to end in something. You are nobler and stronger than I,” she said; “and as much better as one of God’s great angels is better than a sinning man. Your life must go for something.”

“Yes, we will work,” he said.

She moved closer to him and lay still, his black curls touching her smooth little head.

Doss, who had lain at his master’s side, climbed over the bench, and curled himself up in her lap. She drew her skirt up over him, and the three sat motionless for a long time.

“Waldo,” she said, suddenly, “they are laughing at us.”

“Who?” he asked, starting up.