but he asked it on an uncontrollable impulse, nevertheless; he had
vowed to himself that he would wait a month.

His natural repose was greater than hers, for she had the excitable
nerves of the Tropics. He felt her arm quiver before she dropped her
hand from his arm. But she replied almost as calmly: "Nothing after my
mother's death. Absolutely nothing. When a woman suffers as I have done,
and her future is ruined in any case, the world counts for very little
with her, unless it always has counted for more than anything else. We
grow the more cynical and contemptuous as we witness the foolish
gallantries of women who have so much to lose. I am not hard. I am very
soft about many things, and since you came I am become the very tragedy
of youth; but I have no respect for the world as I have seen it. For
many people in the world I have a great deal, but not for the substance
out of which Society has built itself. One never loses one's real
friends, no matter what one does. Every circumstance of my life has
isolated me from this structure called society, forced me to make my own
laws. I may never be happy, because my capacity for happiness is too
great, but in my own case there is no alternative worth considering.
This is the substance of what I have thought since we met, but you are
not to speak to me of it again while my mother lives."

"I do not promise you that--but this: that I will do much thinking
before I speak again."

X

But although they parted with formal courtesy, it was several nights
before either slept. Rachael went home to her bed and lay down, because
she feared to agitate her mother, but her disposition was to go out and
walk the circuit of the Island, and she rose as soon as she dared, and
climbed to the highest crest behind the house. It was cold there, and
the wind was keen. She sat for hours and stared out at Nevis, who was
rolling up her mists, indifferent to the torment of mortals.

During the past fortnight she had conceived a certain stern calm, partly
in self-defence, due in part to love for her mother. But since she had
left Hamilton, last night, there had been moments when she had felt
alone in the Universe with him, exalted to such heights of human passion
that she had imagined herself about to become the mother of a new race.
Her genius, which in a later day might have taken the form of mental
creation, concentrated in a supreme capacity for idealized human
passion, and its blind impu