Then in the darkness she heard a voice from the bracken couch that assured her that Bart's mind had come back to him again.
"Who is there ?" he asked.
"I am going to give you something to eat," she said, letting her voice speak her name.
"Is it very dark ?" he asked, "or am I blind ?" "You can see right enough, Bart," she said gently; "you can watch me kindle the fire." She left the door of the stove open while the spruce twigs were crackling, and in the red, uncertain, dancing light he caught glimpses of the room in which he was, and of her figure, but the fire died down very quickly again.
"I was thinking, Ann," he said slowly, "that it was a pity for Christa to be kept from dancing.

She is young and light on her feet.

God must have made her to dance." "Christa's well enough without it," said Ann, a little shortly.
She thought more coldly of Christa since she had come up to a higher level herself.
"Well, I only meant about Christa that I think I made a mistake," said Bart slowly.
"How a mistake ?" she asked.
It was a very hard question to answer.

A moment before and he thought he had seen what the mistake was and how to speak, but when he tried, all that manifold difficulty of applying that which is eternal to that which is temporal came between his thought and its expression.
He could not know clearly wherein his difficulty lay; no one had taught him about the Pantheism which obliterates moral distinctions, or told him of the subjective ideal which sweeps aside material delight.

He only felt after the realities expressed by these phrases, and dimly perceived that truth lies midway between them, and that truth is the mind of God, and can only be lived, not spoken.