you think that love
broadens a man's outlook? To me it seems to make him narrower--happier,
perhaps, within his own little circle--but distinctly narrower.
Knowledge is the only thing that broadens life, sets it free from the
tyranny of the parish, fills it with the sense of power. And love is the
opposite of knowledge. Love is a kind of an illusion--a happy illusion,
that is what love is. Don't you see that?"

"See it?" I cried. "I don't know what you mean. Do you mean that you
don't really care for Dorothy Ward? Do you mean that what you have won
in her is an illusion? If so, you are as wrong as a man can be."

"No, no," he answered, eagerly, "you know I don't mean that. I could not
live without her. But love is not the only reality. There is something
else, something broader, something----"

"Come away," I said, "come away, man! You are talking nonsense, treason.
You are not true to yourself. You've been working too hard at your
books. There's a maggot in your brain. Come out for a long walk."

That indeed was what he liked best. He was a magnificent walker, easy,
steady, unwearying. He knew every road and lane in the valleys, every
footpath and trail among the mountains. But he cared little for walking
in company; one companion was the most that he could abide. And, strange
to say, it was not Dorothy whom he chose for his most frequent comrade.
With her he would saunter down the Black Brook path, or climb slowly to
the first ridge of Storm-King. But with me he pushed out to the farthest
pinnacle that overhangs the river, and down through the Lonely Heart
gorge, and over the pass of the White Horse, and up to the peak of Cro'
Nest, and across the rugged summit of Black Rock. At every wider outlook
a strange exhilaration seemed to come upon him. His spirit glowed like
a live coal in the wind. He overflowed with brilliant talk and curious
stories of the villages and scattered houses that we could see from our
eyries.

But it was not with me that he made his longest expeditions. They were
solitary. Early on Saturday he would leave the rest of us, with some
slight excuse, and start away on the mountain-road, to be gone all day.
Sometimes he would not return till long after dark. Then I could see the
anxious look deepen on Dorothy's face, and she would slip away down the
road to meet him. But he always came back in good spirits, talkable and
charming. It was the next day that the reaction came. The black fit
took him