hin in the air, a
world of scorn in her face. "Go on sweating beneath the useless load!
Go on building your structure of artificiality that ends centuries
from now in nothingness! Here's happiness to you in your empty life of
self-effacement, with your machine prompted acts, years considered!"
Without looking at him, one hand made scornful motion of dismissal.
"Good-bye, ghost of man; I wash my hands of you."

"Wait, Eleanor!" The man sprang to his feet, the mask lifting from his
face, and there stood revealed a multitude of emotions, unseen of the
world, that flashed from the depths of his brown eyes and quivered in
the angles of his mouth. He came quickly over and took her hand
between his own.

"I'm proud of you,"--a world of tenderness was in his voice--"unspeakably
proud--for I love you. I've done my best to keep us apart, yet all the
time I believed with you. Nature is higher than man, and no power on
earth can prove it otherwise." He looked into the softest of brown
eyes, and his voice trembled. "Beside you the world is nothing. Its
approval or its condemnation are things to be laughed at. With you I
challenge conventionality--society--everything." He bent over her hand
almost reverently and touched it softly with his lips.

"Farewell--until I come," he said.

CHAPTER II--THE LEAP

A man and a woman emerged from the dilapidated day-car as it drew up
before the tiny, sanded station which marked the terminus of the
railway. The man was tall, clean-shaven, quick of step and of glance.
The woman was likewise tall, well-gloved, and, strange phenomenon at a
country station, carried no parcels.

Though easily the centre of attention, the couple were far from being
alone. On the contrary, the car and platform fairly swarmed with
humanity. Men mostly composed the throng that alighted--big,
weather-stained fellows in rough jeans and denims. In the background,
as spectators moved or lounged a sprinkling of others: thinner,
lighter, enveloped in felt, woollen and buckskin, a fringe of heavy
hair peeping out at their backs beneath the broad hat-brims. A few
women were intermingled. Coarsely gowned, sun-browned, they stood;
themselves like suns, but each the centre of a system of bleach-haired
minor satellites. It was into this heterogeneous mass that the tall
man elbowed his way, a neat grip in either hand; the woman following
closely in his wake, her skirts carefully lifted.

Clear of the out-flowing stream the