"What are you men doing here?" she asked. "I heard your voices from
below. What were you talking about?"

"We were talking," said Keene, "my dear Dorothy, we were talking--about
walking--yes, that was it--about walking, and about views. The
conversation was quite warm, almost a debate. Now, you know all the
view-points in this region. Which do you call the best, the most
satisfying, the finest prospect? But I know what you will say: the view
from the little knoll in front of Hilltop. For there, when you are tired
of looking far away, you can turn around and see the old school, and the
linden-trees, and the garden."

"Yes," she answered gravely, "that is really the view that I love best.
I would give up all the others rather than lose that."

III

There was a softness in the November air that brought back memories of
summer, and a few belated daisies were blooming in the old clearing, as
Keene and I passed by the ruins of the farm-house again, early on Sunday
morning. He had been talking ever since we started, pouring out his
praise of knowledge, wide, clear, universal knowledge, as the best of
life's joys, the greatest of life's achievements. The practical life was
a blind, dull routine. Most men were toiling at tasks which they did not
like, by rules which they did not understand. They never looked beyond
the edge of their work. The philosophical life was a spider's web--filmy
threads of theory spun out of the inner consciousness--it touched the
world only at certain chosen points of attachment. There was nothing
firm, nothing substantial in it. You could look through it like a veil
and see the real world lying beyond. But the theorist could see only the
web which he had spun. Knowing did not come by speculating, theorising.
Knowing came by seeing. Vision was the only real knowledge. To see the
world, the whole world, as it is, to look behind the scenes, to read
human life like a book, that was the glorious thing--most satisfying,
divine.

Thus he had talked as we climbed the hill. Now, as we came by the place
where we had first met, a new eagerness sounded in his voice.

"Ever since that day I have inclined to tell you something more about
myself. I felt sure you would understand. I am planning to write a
book--a book of knowledge, in the true sense--a great book about human
life. Not a history, not a theory, but a real view of life, its hidden
motives, its secret relations. How different they are from wh