on in that world of her
acquaintances--that world which had hitherto regarded her as essentially a
pleasure-seeker, self-indulgent and capricious. '"Which of us all," will
they say, "could have done what that girl has done? Which of us, having the
world at her feet, her destiny at her very bidding, would go off and brave
the storms of life out of the heroism of her own nature? How we all misread
her nature! how wrongfully and unfairly we judged her! In what utter
ignorance of her real character was every interpretation we made! How
scornfully has she, by one act, replied to all our misconstruction of her!
What a sarcasm on all our worldliness is her devotion!"'

He was eloquent, after a fashion, and he had, above most men, the charm of
a voice of singular sweetness and melody. It was clear as a bell, and he
could modulate its tones till, like the drip, drip of water on a rock, they
fell one by one upon the ear. Masses had often been moved by the power of
his words, and the mesmeric influence of persuasiveness was a gift to do
him good service now.

There was much in the man that she liked. She liked his rugged boldness and
determination; she liked his contempt for danger and his self-reliance;
and, essentially, she liked how totally different he was to all other men.
He had not their objects, their hopes, their fears, and their ways. To
share the destiny of such a man was to ensure a life that could not pass
unrecorded. There might be storm, and even shipwreck, but there was
notoriety--perhaps even fame!

And how mean and vulgar did all the others she had known seem by comparison
with him--how contemptible the polished insipidity of Walpole, how
artificial the neatly-turned epigrams of Atlee. How would either of these
have behaved in such a moment of danger as this man's? Every minute he
passed there was another peril to his life, and yet he had no thought for
himself--his whole anxiety was to gain time to appeal to her. He told her
she was more to him than his ambition--she saw herself she was more to
him than life. The whirlwind rapidity of his eloquence also moved her,
and the varied arguments he addressed--now to her heroism, now to her
self-sacrifice, now to the power of her beauty, now to the contempt she
felt for the inglorious lives of commonplace people--the ignoble herd who
passed unnoticed. All these swayed her; and after a long interval, in which
she heard him without a word, she said, in a low murmur to he