gh some way behind, seemed to keep very near to him.

On they went in silence for ten minutes more, when the lady again took
up her reproachful theme. Her voice was quieter now, but amid the
harmonious sounds of wind and river he still heard it distinctly. The
clear enunciation of her words seemed to pierce through the baffling
noises of the night as a ray of light pierces through darkness, albeit
that there was excitement in her tones, and her speech was, interspersed
with breathless pauses.

"I have been rude; but you insisted upon my rudeness, now you are
offended by it. So be it--let me say something else! I don't much
believe now in all the sentiment that used to seem so noble to me about
forgetting oneself. No thoughtful person _can_ forget himself, and no
candid person says he has done it. What we need is to think _more_ of
ourselves--to think so much of ourselves that all aims but the highest
are beneath us--are impossible to our own dignity. What we chiefly need
is ambition."

She stopped to take breath. It seemed to Alec she came near enough to
see him as she continued. He could think of nothing, however, but what
she was saying. He felt instinctively that it was because of haste and
some cause of excitement, not in spite of them, that this lady could
speak as she now did.

"Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action,"
she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, "so there must be
a self-regard which is good--too good to degrade itself to worldly
ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam--the gold of
unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness--which makes the _ordinary_
motive of the _ordinary_ good man."

Her voice seemed to vibrate with scorn on the emphasized words.

"If we desired to live nearer heaven--" she said, and then she stopped.

Alec turned perforce to tell her, what she must now perceive, that he
was still close to them; but this impulse was checked by a sudden
thought. Was she not addressing himself? Was there another man now with
her?

He stopped, looked backward, listened. He was quite alone with the lady,
who went past him now, only looking, as she walked, to see why he was
tarrying. In his fierce young loyalty to her he took for granted,
without question or proof, that her escort had deserted her in revenge
for her disdain. He would willingly have gone back to fetch him up, but
the impossibility of finding a man who did not wish to be found,