Gospel in fact perhaps aiming at that--the pearl of price? To be
born again--was that what had happened? The thought cast a light
upon his own serene life, and showed him that it was essentially a
pagan sort of life, temperate perhaps and refined, but still unlit
by any secret fire. It was not that his life was wrong, or that an
abjuration was needed; it was still to be lived, and lived more
intently, but no longer merely self-propelled. . . .

He needed to be alone, to consider, to focus his thought; he went
off for a walk by himself among the hills, past the spring, up the
valley, till he came to a place where the down ran out into the
plain, the bluff crowned with a great earthwork. An enormous view
lay spread out before him. To left and right the smooth elbows of
the uplands ran down into the plain, their skirts clothed with
climbing woods and orchards, hamlets half-hidden, with the smoke
going up from their chimneys; further out the cultivated plain rose
and fell, field beyond field, wood beyond wood, merging at last in
a belt of deep rich colour, and beyond that, blue hills of hope and
desire, and a pale gleam of sea beyond all. The westering sun
filled the air with a golden haze, and enriched the land with soft
rich shadows. There was life spread out before him, just so and not
otherwise, life organised and constructed into toil and a certain
order, out of what dim concourse and strife! For whatever reason,
it was there to be lived; one could not change the conditions of
it, the sun and the rain, the winter and the spring; but behind all
that definite set of forces, was there perhaps a stronger and
larger force still, a brimming tide of energy, that clasped life
close and loved it, and yet regarded something through it and
beyond it that was not yet? His heart seemed full of a great
longing, not to avoid life, but to return and live it in a larger