`` All these years , '' she said gently , `` I suppose you think it must have been a very meagre life ? '' `` No . I am much wiser now than I was once , Joyce . I have learned wisdom beyond the hills . One learns there -- in time -- but sometimes the lesson is learned too late . Shall I tell you what I have learned , Joyce ? The gist of the lesson is that I left happiness behind me in the old valley , when I went away from it , happiness and peace and the joy of living . I did not miss these things for a long while ; I did not even know I had lost them . But I have discovered my loss . '' `` Yet you have been a very successful man , '' she said wonderingly . `` As the world calls success , '' he answered bitterly . `` I have place and wealth and power . But that is not success , Joyce . I am tired of these things ; they are the toys of grown-up children ; they do not satisfy the man 's soul . I have come back to the old valley seeking for what might satisfy , but I have little hope of finding it , unless -- unless -- '' He was silent , remembering that he had forfeited all right to her help in the quest . Yet he realized clearly that only she could help him , only she could guide him back to the path he had missed . It seemed to him that she held in her keeping all the good of his life , all the beauty of his past , all the possibilities of his future . Hers was the master word , but how should he dare ask her to utter it ? They walked among the firs until the stars came out , and they talked of many things . She had kept her freshness of soul and her ideals untarnished .
In the peace of the old valley she had lived a life , narrow outwardly , wondrously deep and wide XXXXX thought and aspiration .
As behind from in of than that to unless until