I don't mind confessing to you, though I couldn't to any one else, it was so big I couldn't see the top of it." With her eyes bent on her sewing she told him about the Voice and the Vision that had come to her when she looked up at Edryn's Window for the first time, and how she had been wondering ever since what great duty it was with which she was to keep tryst some day.
"I can always tell _you_ things without fear of being laughed at," she ended, "so I don't mind saying that I believed at the time, it really was the King's Call, and that some great destiny, oh far greater than Joyce's or Betty's awaited me.

It seemed so real I don't see how I could have been mistaken, and yet--now--it _does_ seem foolish for me to aspire so high.

Doesn't it ?" There was a little break in her voice although she ended with a laugh.
Jack watched the brown head bent over her sewing for several minutes before he replied.

Then he said in a grave kind tone that Mary always liked, because it seemed so intimate and as if he regarded her as his own age, "Since I've been hurt, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that the highest thing a man can aspire to, and the blessedest, is 'to ease the burden of the world.' Either consciously or unconsciously that is what every artist does who paints a master-piece.

He helps us bear our troubles by making us forget them--at least, as long as the uplift and the inspiration stay with us.