"Go your way, Kate. Go to your great undertaking. Go as my wife. I stay with my task. It may carry me farther and bring me more honor than we yet know. I shall go to you when I can: you must come to me--when you will. What more exhilarating? A few years will bring changes. I hear they may send me to Washington, after all. But they'll not need to send me. Lead where you will, I will follow--on condition!"
"The condition?"
She stood laughing at him, shining at him, free and proud as the "victory" of a sculptor's dream.
"That you follow my leadership in turn. We'll have a Republic of Souls, Kate, with equal opportunity--none less, none greater--with high expediency for the watchword."
"Yes. Oh, Karl, I came to say all this!"
"Then some day we'll settle down beneath one roof--we'll have a hearthstone."
"Yes," cried Kate again, this time with an accent that drowned forever the memory of her "no."
"Turn about, Kate; turn about and go down the trail. You'll have to do it alone, I'm afraid. I can't get over there to help."
"I don't need help," retorted Kate. "It's fine doing it alone."
"Follow your path, and I will follow mine. We can keep in sight almost all the way, I think, and, as you know, a little below this height, the paths converge."