it, and you find it grows, it turns into a garden with all sorts of
walks and labyrinths. You walk about in it and are astonished. Then
under your very feet it changes to a wilderness full of precipices and
impenetrable thickets. The wilderness grows to a world, which you can
never see the whole of and never come to the end of. All things are
included in this world, all things and everything.

"It is very much less trouble to take things as simply and smoothly as
most people do than to try to move huge blocks of thought. Thinking is
like drinking--a man easily falls into it, if the shoe pinches
anywhere. And what does he get out of it? An endless struggle with
headaches. He's got to be a hero to keep it up. Do you think you'd ever
get used to drinking?"

"I don't think so," laughed the girl.

"Just as soon as you would to thinking. These headaches are much more
serious for a woman. To endure them one must be free--free as a man is
without chick or child, without a little ache or pain; he must be able
to sink himself in his great trouble." She looked at him in questioning
astonishment. "You see," he went on, "you're a little tender spring
world, and you want to go rolling after a burnt-out, petrified, stiff
and stony winter world. 'Deuce take it!' people will say, 'What do they
want with each other?' The sweet spring world will be burned up or
crushed to pieces--it's plainly to be seen."

"Then let it be!" answered the girl firmly and quietly. "We are all
burning up anyhow ..." And he was conscious again of the May-perfume of
the spring world which intoxicated his unaccustomed senses.

She was too full of beauty for him, too ready with her devotion, too
tender of soul and too longing of heart. Something less generous would
have done better for him. Excess always oppressed and troubled him. His
ascetic chamber rose before his eyes: his bed covered with a woolen
counterpane and a few rags, a regular wolf's lair--his work-table, the
whole room with its clouded windows; and he thought of the distress
that came upon him when he knew there were a few gold pieces in his box
and felt himself turned, as long as they weighed him down, into a
commonplace citizen.

To win a scanty reward with great pains had become a necessity of his
life. The comfortable existence which seemed to be approaching troubled
him. What would he do with it, and it with him? He recognized only a
few duties to himself, and they were more than enough.