His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own?
He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection.

But how?
His tact, trained by all the subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained silent.
The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs.

He supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front of her.
'Ye says yer a man o' larning, an' I b'lieves ye, she began.
He was about to reply that he was only a seeker after truth, but he was checked by the knowledge that she would accept no answer she could not understand.

He fell back on the truth as it was to her, and said simply, 'Yes.' 'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man ?' She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense earnestness--an earnestness that won his entire respect.
'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.' 'Then tell me this--What's the soael o' a man ?' He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.
'The soael o' a man,' she repeated more distinctly, 'ye knows what I mean surely ?' Yes, he knew what she meant, but he knew also that his own most honest convictions hovered between a materialist philosophy and faith in the spiritual unseen.

If at that moment he could have decided between the two he would gladly have done so, for the sake of the eager woman sitting at his feet, but he knew that he did not know which was the truth.
She, still labouring under the impression that she had not made her meaning plain, endeavoured to explain.