"You my inferior!" Saxham almost laughed. "I an example of light and leading, elevated for your guidance! If you were capable of irony——"
He broke off, for she went on as though he had not spoken:
"When first we met—I mean yourself and me—I remember telling you, upon a sudden impulse of confidence and trust in you, what I had determined my life-work was to be——"
"Dear, innocent-wise enthusiast," thought Saxham, "dreaming over your impossible plan for regenerating the world! Beloved child-Quixote, tilting at the Black Windmills, how dare I, who was once the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, love you and seek you for my own? Madness—madness on the face of it!" But, madness or sanity, he could not choose but love her.
"Your life-work!... It was to be carried out among those others whose voices you heard calling you. See," he said, with the shadow of a smile, "how I remember everything you say, or have ever said, in my hearing!"
"You think too well of me," she broke out, with sudden energy.
"It is not possible to think too well of you!"
"You think so now, perhaps, but when you know——"
Her eyes brimmed and the tears welled over her white under-lids. She put up both her little hands, and rubbed the salt drops away with her knuckles, like a child.
"When I have told you, you will alter—you cannot help but alter your opinion!"