To this again there was no answer. Alec naturally went the quicker that he might get out of hearing. As he did so he wondered much that his fellow-travellers went so fast, or rather that the lady did, for she, although some way behind, seemed to keep very near to him.
On they went in silence for ten minutes more, when the lady again took up her reproachful theme. Her voice was quieter now, but amid the harmonious sounds of wind and river he still heard it distinctly. The clear enunciation of her words seemed to pierce through the baffling noises of the night as a ray of light pierces through darkness, albeit that there was excitement in her tones, and her speech was, interspersed with breathless pauses.
"I have been rude; but you insisted upon my rudeness, now you are offended by it. So be it—let me say something else! I don't much believe now in all the sentiment that used to seem so noble to me about forgetting oneself. No thoughtful person can forget himself, and no candid person says he has done it. What we need is to think more of ourselves—to think so much of ourselves that all aims but the highest are beneath us—are impossible to our own dignity. What we chiefly need is ambition."
She stopped to take breath. It seemed to Alec she came near enough to see him as she continued. He could think of nothing, however, but what she was saying. He felt instinctively that it was because of haste and some cause of excitement, not in spite of them, that this lady could speak as she now did.
"Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action," she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, "so there must be a self-regard which is good—too good to degrade itself to worldly ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam—the gold of unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness—which makes the ordinary motive of the ordinary good man."
Her voice seemed to vibrate with scorn on the emphasized words.
"If we desired to live nearer heaven—" she said, and then she stopped.
Alec turned perforce to tell her, what she must now perceive, that he was still close to them; but this impulse was checked by a sudden thought. Was she not addressing himself? Was there another man now with her?
He stopped, looked backward, listened. He was quite alone with the lady, who went past him now, only looking, as she walked, to see why he was tarrying. In his fierce young loyalty to her he took for granted, without question or proof, that her escort had deserted her in revenge for her disdain. He would willingly have gone back to fetch him up, but the impossibility of finding a man who did not wish to be found, the impossibility, as it seemed to him, of letting her go further alone, the boorishness of calling after her—all this constrained him to follow. He ran to make his communication gently, and, as he ran, courage to make it failed him. He thought of her as delicately accustomed to incessant protection. At the thought of letting her know that she was telling her thoughts to a stranger, that she was alone at such hour and place with him, his throat swelled. He hated to speak words that would be so hateful to her; and when he came by her side breathless, and she spoke to him again, he walked on, waiting till she should stop, trying to formulate what he had to say, listening and watching intently for some sign of the recreant. Again speaking as though she must unburden her mind, she turned into the lane. Over its fences he peered down the dark main road, but neither in flash nor interval could the other man be seen. He had not the slightest notion what the lady was saying now; lofty philosophy or practical sarcasm it might be, it was all lost in his exaggerated idea of what her fear and dismay would be when he spoke.
Before he had a chance to speak, however, he saw, in dark outline, the building of the farm to which he supposed her to be going. It would be a thousand times better to conduct her in silence to the door, which was now so near. To tell her before could serve no end, for even if she should wish to return to seek her late companion she could there obtain an escort. So, with feeling of guiltiness in the part he was acting, and in the surly silence he assumed, Alec let her lead up the lane she must know better than he. Her previous speeches, which he had followed so closely, were only remembered now to give food for conjecture as to who she might be and what relation she held to her late companion. The interest in his own journey and its extraordinary object were lost for the time in the excitement of his knight-errantry.