"I hardly follow you," said Eleanor.
"Let us say that such a man's ambition was to stand on the topmost pinnacle of the Jungfrau; and because he felt that he had neither the strength nor the skill requisite to carve his way step by step to the summit, rather than content himself with any lesser altitude, he preferred to sit quietly down, dumb and disappointed, among the ignoble crowd at the bottom."
They walked on for a little while in silence. Gerald kept feasting himself with little side glances at Eleanor's face. And it was a face well worth looking at. A delicate, slightly aquiline nose; two eyes of the deepest and tenderest blue, that put you in mind of an April sky when the clouds have divided after a shower; and massive coils of rich flaxen hair that seemed full of stolen sunshine. Her upper lip had a chiselled fineness of curve and outline rarely found among English women, and this feature it was that gave a special distinction to the character of her face. But far before everything else was a prevailing sweetness of expression--a sweetness that was without insipidity, that only served to heighten that delicate verve--the outcome of an ardent and generous nature--which shone through everything she said and did. She had a small basket on her arm this morning, for she had her pensioners already, and was returning from visiting two of them: a poor old orange woman who had broken her arm through slipping on the ice; and a young mother whose husband lay ill of a fever in the hospital. Gerald, glancing now and again into the beautiful face beside him, felt his heart thrill strangely. He would have dearly liked to fling his arms about her and print a thousand kisses on her lips.
"What is the latest news of the little waif?" asked Gerald suddenly, after a pause.
"I have no news other than that which you know already."
"Then she has not been claimed?"
"No. She is still under Mrs. Nixon's care."
"It is not at all likely that anyone will now come forward and claim her."
"I hope with all my heart that they won't. Those to whom she belonged left her to be found by a stranger, or to perish; and after such an act as that they can hardly want to reclaim her."
"I should think that they would hardly dare do so."