第66章

"You were right: it is a book I have needed.At first it appeared centuries old to me and far away: the greatest gorgeous picture I had ever seen of human life anywhere.I could never tell you of the regret with which it filled me not to have lived in those days--of the longing to have been at Camelot to have seen the King and to have served him; to have been friends with the best of the Knights; to have taken their vows; to have gone out with them to right what was wrong, to wrong nothing that was right."The words were wrung from him with slow terrible effort, as though he were forcing himself to draw nearer and nearer some spot of supreme mental struggle.She listened, stilled, as she had never been by any words of his.

At the same time she felt stifled--felt that she should have to cry out--that he could be so deeply moved and so self-controlled.

More slowly, with more composure, he went on.He was still turned toward her, his hand shading the upper part of his face:

"It was not until--not until--afterwards--that I got something more out of it than all that--got what I suppose you meant....suppose you meant that the whole story was not far away from me but present here--its right and wrong--its temptation; that there was no vow a man could take then that a man must not take now; that every man still has his Camelot and his King, still has to prove his courage and his strength to all men...and that after he has proved these, he has--as his last, highest act of service in the world...to lay them all down, give them all up, for the sake of--of his spirit.You meant that I too, in my life, am to go in quest of the Grail: is it all that?"The tears lay mute on her eyes.She rose quickly and walked away to the garden.He followed her.When they had entered it, he strolled beside her among the plants.

"You must see them once more," she said.Her tone was perfectly quiet and careless.Then she continued with animation:

"Some day you will not know this garden.When we are richer, you will see what I shall do: with it, with the house, with everything! I do not live altogether on memories: I have hopes."They came to the bench where they were used to talk, She sat down, and waited until she could control the least tremor of her voice.Then she turned upon him her noble eyes, the exquisite passionate tender light of which no effort of the will could curtain in.Nor could any self-restraint turn aside the electrical energy of her words:"I thought I should not let you go away without saying something more to you about what has happened lately with Amy.My interest in you, your future, your success, has caused me to feel everything more than you can possibly realize.But I am not thinking of this now: it is nothing, it will pass.What it has caused me to see and to regret more than anything else is the power that life will have to hurt you on account of the ideals that you have built up in secret.We have been talking about Sir Thomas Malory and chivalry and ideals: there is one thing you need to know--all of us need to know it--and to know it well."Ideals are of two kinds.There are those that correspond to our highest sense of perfection.They express what we might be were life, the world, ourselves, all different, all better.Let these be high as they may!