The knowledge brought him a vague unrest.

Furtive, elusive impulses, borne to him on the wings of certain old memories--memories once resolutely put away in the face of his one, big world-desire--now came to trouble him.
It seemed that one must forever go in circles.

With fine courage he had made straight off to toil up the high difficult paths of the ideal.
Never had he consciously turned, nor even swerved.

Yet here he was at length upon his old tracks, come again to the wondering girl.
Did it mean, then, that his soul was baffled--or did it mean that his soul would not suffer him to baffle it, try as he might?
Was that girl of the old days to greet him with her wondering eyes at the end of every high path?
These and many other questions he asked himself.
At the close of this day he sought her, eager for the light of her understanding eyes--for a certain waiting sympathy she never withheld.
As she looked up now with a kind of composed gladness, it seemed to him that they two alone, out of all the world, were sanely quiet.

Silently he sank into a chair near her and they sat long thus, feeling no need of words.