"But you won't wait till then?" he cried, in protest.
For a little while she found it difficult to speak. Her thoughts were very far away from that shining sea and homely turf.
"Yes," she said at last, in a whisper; "I am dedicated to that as a nun to her service." And against that dead man wrapped in ice, his unconquerable rival, Challoner strove in vain.
"So you must look elsewhere," Stella said. "You must not waste your life. I am not wasting mine. I live for an hour which will come."
"I am in too deep, I am afraid, to look elsewhere," said Challoner, gloomily. Stella Frobisher looked at him with a smile of humour playing about her mouth.
"I should like to feel sorry about that," she said. "But I am not noble, and I can't."
They went together down to the house, and she said: "However, you are young. Many things will happen to you. You will change."
But as a matter of fact he did not. He wanted this particular woman, and not another. He cursed himself considerably for his folly in not making sure, when the rescue party got down from the rocks on to the glacier, that the rope about the sacking was not working loose. But such reproaches did not help forward his suit. And the years slipped away, each one a trifle more swiftly than that which had gone before. But in the press of a rising practice he hardly noticed their passage. From time to time Stella Frobisher came to town, sat in the Law Courts while he argued, was taken to shop in Bond Street, and entertained at theatres. Upon one such visit they motored--for motors had come now--on an evening in June down the Portsmouth road, and dined at the inn at Ockham. On their way she said, simply:
"It is the year."
"I know," replied Challoner. "Shall I come with you?"