."

She looked at him.

"Do you think I have not noticed?" smiled the stranger, "a gallant,
handsome lad, and clever. You love him and he loves you. I could not
have gone away without knowing it was well with you."

Her gaze wandered towards the fading light.

"Ah, yes, I love him," she answered petulantly. "Your eyes can see
clearly enough, when they want to. But one does not live on love, in our
world. I will tell you the man I am going to marry if you care to know."
She would not meet his eyes. She kept her gaze still fixed upon the
dingy trees, the mist beyond, and spoke rapidly and vehemently: "The man
who can give me all my soul's desire--money and the things that money
can buy. You think me a woman, I'm only a pig. He is moist, and breathes
like a porpoise; with cunning in place of a brain, and the rest of him
mere stomach. But he is good enough for me."

She hoped this would shock the stranger and that now, perhaps, he would
go. It irritated her to hear him only laugh.

"No," he said, "you will not marry him."

"Who will stop me?" she cried angrily.

"Your Better Self."

His voice had a strange ring of authority, compelling her to turn and
look upon his face. Yes, it was true, the fancy that from the very
first had haunted her. She had met him, talked to him--in silent country
roads, in crowded city streets, where was it? And always in talking
with him her spirit had been lifted up: she had been--what he had always
thought her.

"There are those," continued the stranger (and for the first time she
saw that he was of a noble presence, that his gentle, child-like eyes
could also command), "whose Better Self lies slain by their own hand
and troubles them no more. But yours, my child, you have let grow too
strong; it will ever be your master. You must obey. Flee from it and it
will follow you; you cannot escape it. Insult it and it will chastise
you with burning shame, with stinging self-reproach from day to day."
The sternness faded from the beautiful face, the tenderness crept back.
He laid his hand upon the young girl's shoulder. "You will marry your
lover," he smiled. "With him you will walk the way of sunlight and of
shadow."

And the girl, looking up into the strong, calm face, knew that it would
be so, that the power of resisting her Better Self had passed away from
her for ever.

"Now," said the stranger, "come to the door with me. Leave-takings
are but wasted sadness. Let me pass out quietly