the closest in,"
she added irresistibly to the asking of his eyes.
"But," she hurried on, taking high ground to remedy her
indiscretion, "I look forward to the time when this--other
feeling of ours will become just an idea, as it is now
just an emotion, at which we should try to smile. It is
the attitude of the gods."
"And therefore not becoming to men. Why should we, not
being gods. borrow their attitude?" said Finlay.
"I could never kill it," she put her work in her lap to
say, "by any sudden act of violence. It would seem a kind
of suicide. While it rules it is like one's life--absolute.
But to isolate it--to place it beyond the currents from
the heart--to look at it, and realize it, and conquer it
for what it is--I don't think it need take so very long.
And then our friendship will be beautiful without reproach."
"I sometimes fear there may not be time enough in life,"
he said. "And if I find that I must simply go--to British
Columbia, I think--those mining missions would give a
man his chance against himself. There is splendid work
to be done there, of a rough-and-ready kind that would
make it puerile to spend time in self-questioning."
She smiled as if at a violent boy. "We can do it. We can
do it here," she said. "May I quote another religion to
you? 'From purification there arises in the Yogi a thorough
discernment of the cause and nature of the body, whereupon
he loses that regard which others have for the bodily
form.
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