e of his great occasion manque, that dear day of love when
it leaves the mark of its claim. And in one's regret there is perhaps
some alloy of pity, that less respectful thing. We know him elsewhere
capable of essaying heights, yet we seem to look down upon the drama of
his heart. It may be well to remember that the level is not everything
in love. He who carefully adjusts an intellectual machine may descry a
higher mark; he can construct nothing in a mistress; he is, therefore,
able to see the facts and to discriminate the desirable. But Lorne loved
with all his imagination. This way dares the imitation of the gods by
which it improves the quality of the passion, so that such a love stands
by itself to be considered, apart from the object, one may say. A strong
and beautiful wave lifted Lorne Murchison along to his destiny, since it
was the pulse of his own life, though Dora Milburn played moon to it.

CHAPTER XX

Alfred Hesketh had, after all, written to young Murchison about his
immediate intention of sailing for Canada and visiting Elgin; the letter
arrived a day or two later. It was brief and businesslike, but it gave
Lorne to understand that since his departure the imperial idea had been
steadily fermenting, not only in the national mind, but particularly in
Hesketh's; that it produced in his case a condition only to be properly
treated by personal experience. Hesketh was coming over to prove
whatever advantage there was in seeing for yourself. That he was coming
with the right bias Lorne might infer, he said, from the fact that he
had waited a fortnight to get his passage by the only big line to
New York that stood out for our mercantile supremacy against American
combination.

"He needn't bother to bring any bias," Lorne remarked when he had read
this, "but he'll have to pay a lot of extra luggage on the one he takes
back with him."

He felt a little irritation at being offered the testimony of the Cunard
ticket. Back on his native soil, its independence ran again like sap
in him: nobody wanted a present of good will; the matter stood on its
merits.

He was glad, nevertheless, that Hesketh was coming, gratified that it
would now be his turn to show prospects, and turn figures into facts,
and make plain the imperial profit from the further side. Hesketh was
such an intelligent fellow, there would be the keenest sort of pleasure
in demonstrating things, big things, to him, little things, too, ways
of l