She stood by the mound for a little while thinking of him, of how well he had lived and died, true to his standard of duty, absolutely true, but lacking after all that spirit of love without which our actions profit so little and die with our death. She had a clearer realization of it than ever before. It came to her that Charles Cairness's life, wandering, aimless, disjointed as it was, and her own, though it fell far below even her own not impossibly high ideals, were to more purpose, had in them more of the vital force of creation, were less wasted, than his had been. To have known no enthusiasms—which are but love, in one form or another—is to have failed to give that impulse to the course of events which every man born into the world should hold himself bound to give, as the human debt to the Eternal.
"I see him, I see him all the same," he protested, with tears and evident conviction."Where?" the commandant asked.[Pg 24]After he had gone, Landor turned to Brewster once more. "Are all the bids in the safe again?"Brewster answered that she would, of course. He was rather annoyingly proprietary and sure of her.Brewster avoided it, and became absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet as he pressed his hands together.