“I do not mean that,” she replied. “Indeed, I think I have had a great deal. But I do not think much of happiness. And no amount of happiness that I have known yet should make me wish to stand still. I want to be always growing—and while one is growing Time cannot stand if he would: you drag him on with you! I want to be always becoming more and more capable of happiness.”

“Ah!” returned Vavasor, “as usual you are out of sight beyond me. You must take pity on me and pull me along with you or else you will leave me miles behind and I shall never be able to look at you again, and what eternity would be to me without your face to look at, God only knows.”

“But why should it be so?” answered Hester, almost tenderly. “Our fate is in our own hands. It is ours to determine the direction in which we shall go. I don’t want to preach to you, dear Mr. Vavasor, but why should not every one be reasonable enough to seek the one best thing, and then there would be no parting? All the love and friendship in the world would not suffice to keep people together if they were inwardly parted by such difference as you imply.”

Vavasor’s heart was touched in two ways by this simple speech. First, in the best way in which it was at the moment capable of being touched—he could not help thinking for a moment what a blessed thing it must be to live in perfect peace, as Hester plainly did, about whatever might happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such people as Hester! Secondly, he was pleased in the way of self-satisfaction, for clearly she was not opposed to terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance, why should he not accept, if not the help yet the offer of the help she had almost made? It would bind him to nothing. He understood her well enough to have no slightest suspicion of any coquetry such as a fool like Cornelius would have imagined. He was nevertheless a fool, also, only of another and deeper sort. It needs brains to be a real fool!