point being settled, he could return to his dreams of
the Promised Land, the land of liberty, only to find the fair face
obscuring his fine visions, or to be interrupted by the girl herself, who
sometimes took refuge near him from the importunities of the male blonde,
but more often sought him out to satisfy the new interest his morbid and
peculiar character and, it must be admitted, his cold, good looks had
created in her breast.

At her approach Done felt the stir of a novel exultation in his
traitorous flesh. To be sure, he had woven romances for himself, but his
heroines were always of a type totally different to Lucy Woodrow. They
were strong, dark-eyed, imperious creatures, who espoused all his beliefs
and echoed his defiance of the world. What sense of humour had as yet
found place in his nature was exercised to the full at the expense of the
lackadaisical lover in life and in fiction, and now he felt there was
something absurdly pensive in this phenomenon of his own. He satisfied
himself that he was not in love with Lucy, but here were the marked
characteristics of the fond and fatuous hero--the obtruding face of the
beloved, idealized and transfused with a sickly pathos; the premonitory
tremblings; the recurrence of thoughts of the fair. It was all in
defiance of his philosophy--an insult to his manhood. Like many very
young men, Done was extremely jealous of the honour of his manhood. It is
the pride of a new possession.

Certainly Lucy Woodrow was quite honest to her nature in her attitude
towards the young stranger. She did not dissect her emotions: she did not
even question them. In becoming her hero Done had levelled all the
conventional barriers, and her friendship and concern were sincere. She
had never recurred to the incident of the rescue, feeling that the
subject was painful to him, and glad to dwell no further upon an act of
her own that of late had become quite inexplicable to her. Lucy no longer
turned her eyes to the wake of the Francis Cadman: she no longer yearned
backward to the land where she had left only a grave. Her mind was
employed with a most serious duty: she had adopted a mission, and that
mission was the regeneration of James Done. The regeneration was not to
be so much religious as moral. The poor boy's life was disordered; he had
suffered some great wrong; his naturally beautiful, brave, generous
disposition was soured; he had lost faith in God and in woman, and it
remained for he