"Why, Venice, mother."
"And suppose I don't like Venice? I sometimes think I shan't."
"Then we will not stay there, dear. We will go on to Sorrento."
"After all, Dolly, one can't keep always going somewhere. One must come to a stop."
"The best way is not to think of that till one is obliged to do it,"
said Lawrence. "Enjoy while you have to enjoy."
"That ain't a very safe maxim, seems to me," said Rupert. "One's rope might get twisted up."
"It is the maxim of a great many wise men," said Lawrence, ignoring the figure.
"Is it wise?" said Dolly. "Would you spend your money so, like your time? spend to the last farthing, before you made any provision for what was to be next?"
"No, for I need not. In money matters one can always take care to have means ahead."
"So you can in the other thing."
"How?" said Rupert, and "How?" said Lawrence, in the same breath. "You cannot always, as Mrs. Copley said, go on finding new places to go to and new things to see."
"I'd have what would put me above the need of that."
"What? Philosophy? Stoicism?"
"No," said Dolly softly.
"Have you discovered the philosopher's stone?" said Lawrence; "and can you turn common things into gold for your purposes?"
"Yes," said Dolly in the same way.
"Let us hear how, won't you? Is it books, or writing, or art perhaps?
You are very fond of that, I know."
"No," said Dolly slowly; "and I cannot show it to you, either, Mr. St.
Leger. It is like the golden water in the story in the Arabian Nights, which was at the top of a hill, and people went up the hill to get it; but on the way so many strange voices sounded in their ears that they were tempted to look round; and if they looked round they were turned to stone. So the way was marked with stones."
"And nobody got the golden water?"
"Yes. At last one went up, who being forewarned, stopped her ears and never looked round. She got to the top and found the golden water. We in these times give it another name. It is the water of life."
"What _are_ you talking about, Dolly?" said her mother.
"Must one go up the hill with one's ears stopped _now_, to get the wonderful water?" Lawrence asked. Dolly nodded.
"And when you have got it--what then?"
"Then you have got it," said Dolly. "It is the water of life. And you have done with this dry wilderness that mother is complaining of, and you are recommending."
Lawrence stroked and pulled his moustache, as he might have done if a lady had spoken to him in polite Sanscrit. Rupert looked gravely out of the carriage window. Neither answered, and nobody spoke another word, till Mrs. Copley exclaimed, "There's Leipzig!"
"Looks sort o' peaceful now," remarked Rupert.
"Peaceful? Why, ain't the place quiet?" Mrs. Copley asked anxiously.
"Quiet enough," said Lawrence; "but there was a time, not so long ago, when it wasn't exactly so."
"When was that?"
"When all the uniforms of Europe were chasing through it," said Dolly; "some chased and some chasing; when the country was covered with armies; when a half a million of men or so fought a long battle here, and the suburbs of Leipzig were full of dead and wounded and sick and starving; there was not much peace then in or out of the city; though there was some rejoicing."
"Oh," said Mrs. Copley, "you mean"----
"When Napoleon was beaten here, mother."
"War's a mean thing!" said Rupert.
"That's not precisely the view civilised peoples take of it," said Lawrence with a slight sneer.
"True, though," said Dolly.
"Mean?" said Lawrence. "Do you think it was a mean thing for Germany to rise up and cast out the power that had been oppressing her? or for the other powers of Europe to help?"
"No; but very mean for the side that had given the occasion."
"That's as you look at it," said Lawrence.
"No, but how God looks at it. You cannot possibly think," said Dolly slowly, going back to her old childish expression,--"that He likes it."
Lawrence could not help smiling at this very original view. "Very few people that make war ask that question," he said.
"God will ask them, though," said Dolly, "why they did not. I think few people ask that question, Mr. St. Leger, about anything."
"It is not usual, except for a little saint here and there like you,"
he allowed.
"And yet it is the only question. There is nothing else to be asked about a matter; almost nothing else. If that is settled, it is all settled."
"If we were only all saints," Lawrence put in.
"Why are not we?"
"I don't know. I suppose everybody is not cut out for such a vocation."
"Everybody ought to be a saint."
"Do you mean that?" cried Rupert. "I thought,--I mean, I thought it was a special gift."