xactly made up his mind--he saw the straight path, and the possibility
of taking any other never occurred to him. But if he succeeded in this
hateful and (to a man of his type) inevitable quest, he would not only
sacrifice Elisabeth's interests, he would also further his own by making
it possible for him to ask her to marry him--a thing which he felt he
could never do as long as she was one of the wealthiest women in
Mershire, and he was only the manager of her works. Duty is never so
difficult to certain men as when it wears the garb and carries with it
the rewards of self-interest; others, on the contrary, find that a
joint-stock company, composed of the Right and the Profitable, supplies
its passengers with a most satisfactory permanent way whereby to travel
through life. There is no doubt that these latter have by far the more
comfortable journey; but whether they are equally contented when they
have reached that journey's end, none of them have as yet returned to
tell us.

"If somebody must go to Australia after that tiresome young man, why
need it be you?" Elisabeth persisted. "Can't you send somebody else in
your place?"

"I am afraid I couldn't trust anybody else to sift the matter as
thoroughly as I should. I really must go, Betty. Please don't make it
too hard for me."

"Do you mean you will still go, even though I beg you not?"

"I am afraid I must."

Elisabeth rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, as
became a dethroned and offended queen. "Then that is the end of the
matter as far as I am concerned, and it is a waste of time to discuss
it further; but I must confess that there is nothing in the world I hate
so much as a prig," she said, as she swept out of the room.

It was her final shot, and it told. She could hardly have selected one
more admirably calculated to wound, and it went straight through
Christopher's heart. It was now obvious that she did not love him, and
never could have loved him, he assured himself, or she would not have
misjudged him so cruelly, or said such hard things to him. He did not
realize that an angry woman says not what she thinks, but what she
thinks will most hurt the man with whom she is angry. He also did not
realize--what man does?--how difficult it is for any woman to believe
that a man can care for her and disagree with her at the same time, even
though the disagreement be upon a purely impersonal question. Naturally,
when the question happens t