"But how could you know what I am interested in?"

"I see how you live--apart from everybody. And you spend all your
time in books!"

Thyrsis suddenly recollected something which had amused him very
much. Corydon had been reading "Middlemarch," and had told him that
Dr. Casaubon reminded her of him. "And so I'm still just a bookworm
to you!" he laughed.

"But isn't your interest in things always intellectual?" she asked.

"Then you suppose I'm doing this just as an exercise in technique?"
he countered.

"It's taken me quite by surprise," said Corydon.

"We have three faculties in us," Thyrsis propounded--"intellect,
feeling, and will; and to be a complete human being, we have to
develop all of them."

"But you spend so much time piling up learning!"

"I need to know a great many things," he said. "I'm not conscious of
studying anything I don't need for my purpose."

"What is the purpose?" she asked.

He touched the precious manuscript. "This," he said.