d energies, such as they were,
could continue thus unused. And I had, too, in my mind that other scene
which I had beheld, of how the boy was withdrawn from the two old people
in the other valley. Was it always thus, I wondered? Was it so, that
souls were drawn upwards in ceaseless pilgrimage, loving and passing on,
and leaving in the hearts of those who stayed behind a longing
unassuaged, which was presently to draw them onwards from the peace
which they loved perhaps too well?

XXX

The serene life came all to an end very suddenly, and with no warning.
One day I had been sitting with Cynthia, and the child was playing on
the floor with some little things--stones, bits of sticks, nuts--which
it had collected. It was a mysterious game too, accompanied with much
impressive talk and gesticulations, much emphatic lecturing of
recalcitrant pebbles, with interludes of unaccountable laughter. We had
been watching the child, when Cynthia leaned across to me and said:

"There is something in your mind, dear, which I cannot quite see into.
It has been there for a long time, and I have not liked to ask you about
it. Won't you tell me what it is?"

"Yes, of course," I said; "I will tell you anything I can."

"It has nothing to do with me," said Cynthia, "nor with the child; it
is about yourself, I think; and it is not altogether a happy thought."

"It is not unhappy," I said, "because I am very happy and very
well-content. It is just this, I think. You know, don't you, how I was
being employed, before I came back, God be praised, to find you? I was
being trained, very carefully and elaborately trained, I won't say to
help people, but to be of use in a way. Well, I have been wondering why
all that was suspended and cut short, just when I seemed to be finishing
my training. I have been much happier here than I ever was before, of
course. Indeed I have been so happy that I have sometimes thought it
almost wrong that any one should have so much to enjoy. But I am
puzzled, because the other work seems thrown away. If you wonder whether
I want to leave our life here and go back to the other, of course I do
not; but I have felt idle, and like a boy turned down from a high class
at school to a low one."

"That is not very complimentary to me!" said Cynthia, laughing. "Suppose
we say a boy who has been working too hard for his health, and has been
given a long holiday?"

"Yes," I said, "that is better. It is as if a clerk