. "_I_ an example of light and
leading, elevated for your guidance! If you were capable of irony----"

He broke off, for she went on as though he had not spoken:

"When first we met--I mean yourself and me--I remember telling you, upon a
sudden impulse of confidence and trust in you, what I had determined my
life-work was to be----"

"Dear, innocent-wise enthusiast," thought Saxham, "dreaming over your
impossible plan for regenerating the world! Beloved child-Quixote, tilting
at the Black Windmills, how dare I, who was once the Dop Doctor of
Gueldersdorp, love you and seek you for my own? Madness--madness on the
face of it!" But, madness or sanity, he could not choose but love her.

"Your life-work!... It was to be carried out among _those others_ whose
voices you heard calling you. See," he said, with the shadow of a smile,
"how I remember everything you say, or have ever said, in my hearing!"

"You think too well of me," she broke out, with sudden energy.

"It is not possible to think too well of you!"

"You think so now, perhaps, but when you know----"

Her eyes brimmed and the tears welled over her white under-lids. She put
up both her little hands, and rubbed the salt drops away with her
knuckles, like a child.

"When I have told you, you will alter--you cannot help but alter your
opinion!"

"No!" denied Saxham; and the monosyllable seemed to drop from his grim
lips like a stone. Her bosom heaved with short, quick sobs.

"I meant to go out into the world, and meet those women who think and work
for women, and hear all they have to say, and learn all they have to
teach. Then----"

She was Beatrice again, as she turned her face full on Saxham, and once
more the virginal veil fell, and he was conscious of strange abysses of
knowledge opening in those eyes.

"--Then I meant to seek out those women and girls and children of whom I
spoke to you, those who lie fettered with chains that wicked men have
riveted, in the dark dungeons that their tyrants and torturers have
quarried out of the living rock, out of the reach of fresh air and
sunshine, beyond the reach of those who would pity and help ... I meant to
go down to them, and comfort them, and raise them up. I meant to have
said: 'Trust me, believe me, listen to me, follow me! For my sorrow is
your sorrow, and my wrong your wrong, and my shame yours--O! my poor, poor
unhappy sisters!...'"

There was a great drumming and surging of the blood in Saxham's e