tion to duty, this eternal abnegation, this yielding
up of herself, her dearest, most cherished wishes to the demands of duty
and the great world?

"I don't know what I want," she said faintly. "It don't seem as if one
_could_ be happy--very long."

All at once she moved close to him and laid her cheek upon the arm of
his chair and clasped his hand in both her own, murmuring: "But I have
you now, I have you now, no matter what is coming to us."

A sense of weakness overcame her. What did she care that Bennett should
fulfil his destiny, should round out his career, should continue to be
the Great Man? It was he, Bennett, that she loved--not his greatness,
not his career. Let it all go, let ambition die, let others less worthy
succeed in the mighty task. What were fame and honour and glory and the
sense of a divinely appointed duty done at last to the clasp of his hand
and the sound of his voice?

In November of that year Lloyd and Bennett were married. Two guests only
assisted at the ceremony. These were Campbell and his little daughter
Hattie.

X.

The months passed; Christmas came and went. Until then the winter had
been unusually mild, but January set in with a succession of vicious
cold snaps and great blustering winds out of the northeast. Lloyd and
Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their new home at Medford. They
had no desire to travel, and Bennett's forthcoming book demanded his
attention. Adler stayed on about the house. He and the dog Kamiska were
companions inseparable. At long intervals visitors presented
themselves--Dr. Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett's. But
the great rush of interviewers, editors, and projectors of marvellous
schemes that had crowded Bennett's anterooms during the spring and early
summer was conspicuously dwindling. The press ceased to speak of him;
even his mail had fallen away. Now, whenever the journals of the day
devoted space to arctic exploration, it was invariably in reference to
the English expedition wintering on the Greenland coast. That world that
had clamoured so loudly upon Bennett's return, while, perhaps, not yet
forgetting him, was already ignoring him, was looking in other
directions. Another man was in the public eye.

But in every sense these two--Lloyd and Bennett--were out of the world.
They had freed themselves from the current of affairs. They stood aside
while the great tide went careering past swift and turbulent, and one of
t