“Mr. Westwood seems to have lost all his early ambition,” said Agnes.
“That is true,” said Claude, in a low voice. “I have lost my brother.”
Clare looked grave. Agnes glanced at the man. She wondered how it was possible that he could forget the words which he had spoken in that same room when she only had been there to hear them. “It is for you—it is for you,” he had cried. “It is for you I mean to go to Africa. I have set my heart upon winning a name that shall be in some degree worthy of you, my beloved!”
Those were the words which he had said to her while his arms were about her and her cheek rested on his shoulder. How was it possible that he could forget them? How could he now talk about having lost all his ambition? She was his ambition. He had gone forth to win a jewel of honour that should be worthy of her wearing, and he had returned, having snatched that jewel from the very hand of Death, but he had not laid it at her feet.
Still she was silent. She remembered what Sir Percival had said to her: it was left for her to win him back.
It was Clare who had the boldness to break the impressive silence that followed his pathetic phrase, “I have lost my brother.”
“You told me that he had ambition,” said she. “You told me that his ambition was your success, and yet you refuse to let the world know how you have succeeded.”
He looked at her for a few moments. Her face was slightly flushed by the force of the earnestness with which she had spoken.
“Perhaps,” he said, slowly, “perhaps my ambition may awake again one of these days. I saw some queer things. Sometimes, when I think of them—of the strange people—savages, but with a code and religious traditions precisely the same as those of the Hebrews—I feel that it might perhaps be well if I wrote something about them; but then, I feel—oh no, I can't bring myself to do anything now. I cannot do anything until”—
His face darkened. He walked away from her to the window. In an instant he called out in quite a different tone from that in which he had spoken: