It has been weighed and measured by nearly all the great philosophers, but I don't think any two of them have ever agreed about the result." "You are a philosopher, sir, too, are you not?
How do you define it ?" "I don't know that I've arrived at any conclusion." "And yet, John, I thought that you were a man of decision." "That's irony, Julie.

But men of decision perhaps are puzzled by it more than anybody else." "Then you can neither describe it nor give it a name ?" "It has names, several--but most of them are misleading," said John, thoughtfully.
"So you leave it to me to discover what this mysterious influence may be, or to remain forever in ignorance of it." In her dark red cloak with tendrils of the deep golden hair showing at the edge of her hood, she seemed to John a very sprite of the snows, and the blue eyes said clearly to the gray: "I know!" And the gray answered back in the same language: "I know!" Nevertheless John would not let words betray him.

He thought that the mountain and their isolation gave him an unfair advantage, and the young crusader upon whom the mantle of chivalry had descended had too knightly a soul to use it, at least in speech.
"And so, sir," she said, "you will not venture upon such an abstruse subject ?" "No, I think not.

I don't believe you could call it an evasion, but perhaps it's fear." "Fear of what, John ?" "I'm not sure about that, either.

Perhaps elsewhere and under more suitable circumstances I may be able to put my thought into words, precise and understandable.