trying to be known, who were not of her world, but who toiled and prayed and hoped to be famous.  This man came into her life suddenly with his stories of adventure and strange people and strange places, of things done for the love of doing them and not for the reward or reputation, and he bewildered her at first, I suppose, and then fascinated, and then won her.  You can imagine how it was, these two walking the deck together during the day, or sitting side by side when the night came on, the ocean stretched before them.  The daring of his present undertaking, the absurd glamour that is thrown over those who have gone into that strange country from which some travellers return, and the picturesqueness of his past life.  It is no wonder the girl made too much of him.  I do not think he knew what was coming.  He did not pose before her.  I am quite sure, from what I knew of him, that he did not.  Indeed, I believed him when he said that he had fought against the more than interest she had begun to show for him.  He was the sort of man women care for, but they had not been of this woman’s class or calibre.  It came to him like a sign from the heavens.  It was as if a goddess had stooped to him.  He told her when they separated that if he succeeded—­if he opened this unknown country, if he was rewarded as they had promised to reward him—­he might dare to come to her; and she called him her knight-errant, and gave him her chain and locket to wear, and told him, whether he failed or succeeded it meant nothing to her, and that her life was his while it lasted, and her soul as well.

“I think,” Gordon said, stopping abruptly, with an air of careful consideration, “that those were her words as he repeated them to me.”

He raised his eyes thoughtfully towards the face of the girl opposite, and then glanced past her, as if he were trying to recall the words the man had used.  The fine, beautiful face of the woman was white and drawn around the lips, and she gave a quick, appealing glance at her hostess, as if she would beg to be allowed to go.  But Mrs. Trevelyan and her guests were watching Gordon or toying with the things in front of them.  The dinner had been served, and not even the soft movements of the servants interrupted the young man’s story.

“You can imagine a man,” Gordon went on, more lightly, “finding a hansom cab slow when he is riding from the station to see the woman he loves; but imagine this man urging himself and the rest of us to hurry when we were in the heart of Africa, with six months’ travel in front of us before we could reach the first limits of civilization.  That is what this man did.  When he was still on his litter he used to toss and turn, and abuse the bearers and porters and myself because we moved so slowly.  When we stopped for the night he would chafe and fret at the delay; and when the morning came he was the first to wake, if he slept at all, and eager to push on.  When at last he was able