«
    »You have found no firmer hope in which to work?«
    »Hope? I am not sure that I understand you.«
    He looked her in the face, and she said hurriedly:
    »Are you still as far as ever from satisfying yourself? Does your work bring
you nothing but a comparative satisfaction?«
    »I am conscious of having progressed an inch or two on the way of infinity,«
Mallard replied. »That brings me no nearer to an end.«
    »But you have a purpose; you follow it steadily. It is much to be able to
say that.«
    »Do you mean it for consolation?«
    »Not in any sense that you need resent,« Miriam gave answer, a little
coldly.
    »I felt no resentment. But I should like to know what sanction of a life's
effort you look for, now? We talked once, perhaps you remember, of one kind of
work being higher than another. How do you think now on that subject?«
    She made delay before saying:
    »It is long since I thought of it at all. I have been too busy learning the
simplest things to trouble about the most difficult.«
    »To learn, then, has been your object all this time. Let me question you in
turn. Do you find it all-sufficient?«
    »No; because I have begun too late. I am doing now what I ought to have done
when I was a girl, and I have always the feeling of being behindhand.«
    »But the object, in itself, quite apart from your progress? Is it enough to
study a variety of things, and feel that you make some progress towards a
possible ideal of education? Does this suffice to your life?«
    She answered confusedly:
    »I can't know yet; I can't see before me clearly enough.«
    Mallard was on the point of pressing the question, but he refrained, and
shaped his thought in a different way.
    »Do you think of remaining in England?«
    »Probably I shall.«
    »You will return to your home in Lancashire?«
    »I haven't yet determined,« she replied formally.
    The dialogue seemed to be at an end. Unobservant of each other, they reached
the Via Crucis, which leads up to S. Pietro in Montorio. Arrived at the terrace,
they stood to look down on Rome.
    »After all, you are tired,« said Mallard, when he had glanced at her.
    »Indeed I am
