ok
forward into the future? Have you no personal ambitions or hopes?"

He looked steadily ahead of him.

"I am only a very ordinary man," he replied. "Like every one else,
sometimes I look up to the clouds."

"Tell me what you see there?" she begged.

He was silent. The sound of voices now came to them like a distant
murmur, a background to the slow falling of the water into the fountain
basin.

"Lady Elisabeth," he said, "it is not always possible to tell even one's
own self what the thoughts mean which come into one's brain."

"You will not even try to tell me, then?"

"I must not," he answered.

She sat with her hands folded in front of her, her head drooped a
little. Maraton felt himself suddenly at war with a whole multitude of
emotions. Was it possible that this thing had come to him, that a woman
could take the great place in his life, a woman not of his kind, one who
could not even share the passion which was to have absorbed every
impulse of his existence to the end? She was of a different world.
Perhaps it had all been a mistake. Perhaps it would have been better
for him to have stayed outside, to have never crossed the little
borderland which led into the land of compromises. And all the time,
while his brain was at work, something stronger, more wonderful, was
throbbing in his heart. He moved restlessly in his place. Her ungloved
hand lay within a few inches of him. He suddenly caught it.

"Lady Elisabeth," he whispered, "I feel like a traitor. I feel myself
moved to say things to you under false pretences. I ought not to have
come here."

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "You can't mean--"

Their eyes met. He read the truth unerringly. "No, not that," he
answered. "There is no one. What I feel is, at any rate, consecrate.
But I have no right. I am not sure, even at this moment, whether it is
not in my heart to take a step which you would look upon as the blackest
ingratitude. My life, Lady Elisabeth, holds issues in it far apart, and
it is vowed, dedicate."

"You are going to break away?" she asked quietly.

"I may," he admitted. "That is the truth. That is why I hesitated
about coming here to-night. And yet, I wanted to come. I wasn't sure
why. I know now--it was to see you."

"Oh, don't be rash!" she begged. "Don't! I may talk to you now really
from my heart, mayn't I?" she went on, looking steadfastly into his
face. "Don't imagine that that great gulf exists. It doesn't. If you
break