He stopped, for he would not add the last two words. Julia said them for him.
'Without fear.'
'For all the world like the wicked baronet,' cried the mocking Dick. 'Once aboard the lugger, and the gurl is mine.'
Julia reflected for a little while. She did not want to resist the admiration with which Alec filled her. But she shuddered. He did not seem to fit in with the generality of men.
'Don't you want people to remember you?' she asked.
'Perhaps they will,' he answered slowly. 'Perhaps in a hundred years, in some flourishing town where I discovered nothing but wilderness, they will commission a second-rate sculptor to make a fancy statue of me. And I shall stand in front of the Stock Exchange, a convenient perch for birds, to look eternally upon the shabby deeds of human kind.'
He gave a short, abrupt laugh, and his words were followed by silence. Julia gave Dick a glance which he took to be a signal that she wished to be alone with Alec.
'Forgive me if I leave you for one minute,' he said.
He got up and left the room. The silence still continued, and Alec seemed immersed in thought. At last Julia answered him.
'And is that really all? I can't help thinking that at the bottom of your heart there is something that you've never told to a living soul.'