"It can't be very pleasant for you," he said at last, "to be bored by the affairs of every renegade to whom you are kind, because of some fancied good you may see in him; but you are turning out just the sort of woman I used to fancy you might be—and—I am grateful to you."
"That's all right," she answered in the old brusque way. To tell the truth, a part of his speech was scarcely heard. Something in the whole affair—the confidence and personal interest, and all—had taken her memory back to the days of that cultus corrie, when another man had shared with her scenes somewhat similar to this. Was there a sort of fate that had set her apart for this sort of thing? She smiled a little grimly at the fancy, and scarcely heard him. He saw the ghost of a smile, and it made him check himself in something he was about to say, and walk toward the door.
She neither spoke nor moved; her face was still toward the window. Turning to look at her, his indecision disappeared, and in three steps he was beside her.
"Rachel, I want to speak to you of something else," he said rapidly, almost eagerly, as if anxious to have it said and done with; "I—I want to tell you what that anchor is I've been looking for, and without which I never will be able to do the higher class of work, and—and—"
"Yes?"
He had stopped, making a rather awkward pause after his eager beginning. With the one encouraging word, she looked up at him and waited.
"It is a woman."
"Not an unusual anchor for mankind," she remarked with a little laugh.
But there was no answering smile in his eyes; they were very serious.
"I never will be much good to myself, or the rest of the world, until I find her again," he said, "though no one's words are likely to help me more than yours. You would make one ambitious if he dared be and—"