CHAPTER XXIV

THE NEW WORLD, AND THE WOMAN WHO MAY
NOT DWELL THEREIN.

P here in the glen schoolhouse, after my

pupils have straggled home, there comes
to me at times, and so sudden that it may be
while I am infusing my tea, a hot desire to write
great books. Perhaps an hour afterwards I rise,
beaten, from my desk, flinging all I have written
into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second
thought), and curse myself as an ingle-nook man,
for I see that one can only paint what he himself
has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the
vices, even to being an impious man, that I may
describe them better. For this may I be par-
doned. It comes to nothing in the end, save
that my tea is brackish,

Yet though my solitary life in the glen is
cheating me of many experiences, more helpful
to a writer than to a Christian, it has not been so
tame but that I can understand why Babbie cried
when she went into Nanny’s garden and saw the
new world. Let no one who loves be called
altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has
its rainbow, and Babbie knew that Gavin loved
her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff berry
bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to

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