“You might have been so happy here, Edward,” said Mrs. Markland, looking into his face and smiling feebly.

“A happy idler?  Impossible!”

“You have been no idler, my husband, since our retirement from the city.  Look around, and say whose intelligence, whose taste, are visible wherever the eye falls?”

“A poor, vain life, for a man of thought and energy, has been mine, Agnes, during the last few years.  The world has claims on me beyond that of mere landscape-gardening!  In a cultivation of the beautiful alone no man of vigorous mind can or ought to rest satisfied.  There is a goal beyond, and it is already dimly revealed, in the far distance, to my straining vision.”

“I greatly fear, Edward,” replied his wife, speaking in her gentle, yet impressive way, “that when the goal you now appear so eager to reach, is gained, you will see still another beyond.”

“It may be so, Agnes,” was answered, in a slightly depressed voice; “yet the impulse to bear onward to the goal now in view is not the less ardent for the suggestion.  I can no more pause than the avalanche once in motion.  I must onward in the race I have entered.”

“To gain what, Edward?”

“I shall gain large wealth.”

“Have we not all things here that heart can desire, my husband?”

“No, Agnes,” was replied with emphasis.

“What is lacking?”

“Contentment.”

“Edward!” There came a quick flush to the brow of Mrs. Markland.

“I cannot help the fact, Agnes,” said Mr. Markland.  “For months I have suffered from a growing dissatisfaction with the fruitless life I am leading.”

“And yet with what a fond desire we looked forward to the time when we could call a spot like this our own!  The world had for us no more tempting offer.”

“While struggling up from the valley, we cannot know how wide the landscape will spread beneath our enchanted vision.  We fix our eyes on the point to be gained.  That reached, we are, for a time, content with our elevation.  But just enough of valley and mountain, stretching far off in the dim distance, is revealed, to quicken our desire for a more extended vision, and soon, with renewed strength, we lift our gaze upward, and the word ‘excelsior!’ comes almost unbidden to our lips.  There is a higher and a highest place to be gained, and I feel, Agnes, that there will be no rest for my feet until I reach the highest.”

“Pray heaven your too eager feet stumble not!” almost sobbed Mrs. Markland, with something of a prophetic impulse.

The tone and manner of his wife, more than her words, disturbed Mr. Markland.

“Why should the fact of my re-entering business so trouble you?” he asked.  “An active, useful life is man’s truest life, and the only one in which he can hope for contentment.”

Mrs. Markland did not answer, but partly turned her face away to conceal its expression.