Ruxton's eyes devoured the entrancing animation which accompanied the words. An added amazement had leapt within him. She had fathomed his secret feelings as his eyes had searched the surface of the shimmering summer sea. Her understanding was even more uncanny than had been her sudden apparition. Who was she? he kept reiterating to himself. Who? And where did she come from?
"I felt all that," he found himself saying.
"I know. I have felt it all, too. But your feeling had no inspiration in cowardice. It is the mind of the imaginative that sees an exaggeration in all that offends the sensibilities. It is the mind that distorts with painful fancy the threat which has not yet fallen. It is the mind which is inspired by a heart strong with hope, which in its turn owes its inspiration to a spirit possessed of a great power to do. Of such spirit are the leaders of men. Their mental agony is theirs alone, they suffer and do for those others who do not possess power to do for themselves."
The woman's eyes were turned upon the distant horizon again. Their gaze was introspective, and she talked as she thought, regardless for the time of the man beside her.
But he was more mindful. No word of hers was lost upon him. He was marvelling at her depth of understanding, he was marvelling at her simplicity of expression. And, through it all, he was noting and endeavoring to place that suggestion of foreign intonation in her perfect English accent. More and more was this splendid creature becoming an enigma. More and more was he becoming absorbed in her, and more surely was his promise of simple comradeship becoming an impossibility.
"And the threat—which inspires these phantasms?" he said, as the musical tones ceased, and the murmur of the sea came up to them in their eyrie.
"It is a reality."
Ruxton stirred. He sat up once more, and his gaze, for the moment, left the beautiful profile, and wandered towards the eastern horizon.
"I know," he said simply.
"I have seen," came the impressive rejoinder.