on, "I wanted to see you to-day, and I did not go to see you: my
will acted perfectly well, and I seemed able to resist any temptation.
I came out here to walk alone, thinking that I should be even farther
away from you here than elsewhere, when, lo! you start up in my path,
and here we are together. It is just as if some malicious spirit
had mocked me with an idea of my own strength, only to betray me the
better through my weakness." He spoke with an intensity which seemed
out of place, and strangely unlike his usual calm manner. Somehow,
a feeling of great delight had come over me as he spoke. I felt
pleased--why I do not know--at his evident impatience and annoyance.

"But why," said I, "did you turn with me? _There_ would have been the
moment for your will to act."

"You think so? That is hardly fair, Miss Linton. Does one brand a
soldier as a coward and a laggard who has fought and won a battle, and
has sunk exhausted upon his arms to sleep, if he is discomfited and
dismayed when, just as slumber has him in its arms, a fresh foe sets
upon him? No, I _could_ not turn back."

His eyes were bent on me again, and something in them stirred my soul
to its depths. Such a delicious feeling seemed stealing over me--a
feeling of mixed power and weakness. I felt my color rise, but I
looked ahead over the snowfields and said, "I don't see why you should
have turned back. Why should you want to be with me and not be with
me? I wanted to see you too."

I started as he spoke again, for his voice and manner were both
changed--all the quiver and intensity gone out of them. "The 'reason
why' of a mood is hard to find sometimes, and when found one has a
conviction that no one but one's self would see its reasonableness,"
he said with a laugh cold and musical. "Let us talk of something we
can both be sure to understand."

He seemed far away again. For a moment he had seemed so near--nearer,
I think, than I ever remember to have felt a man to be. Then he
talked, and talked very well, and made me talk, though it was not as
easy as it usually is to me, and though we spoke of things that are
generally to me like the sound of a trumpet to the war-horse. My
spirit did not rise: the words would hardly come. I wanted to be alone
and think it over--think over his words, his manner, his voice, the
look in his eyes, and see what they meant, and, if I could, why he had
changed so suddenly to me.

When we had walked some distance farther h