“And give up your appointment—­your public life?” she cried in dismay.

He smiled at her faintly, as though trying to console her.

“Yes; I shan’t be missed, and I shall do better by myself.  I understand the wheat and the land.  They are friends that don’t fail one.”

Elizabeth flushed.

“Mr. Anderson!—­you mustn’t give up your work.  Canada asks it of you.”

“I shall only be changing my work.  A man can do nothing better for Canada than break up land.”

“You can do that—­and other things besides.  Please—­please—­do nothing rash!”

She bent over to him, her brown eyes full of entreaty, her hand laid gently, timidly on his.

He could not bear to distress her—­but he must.

“I sent in my resignation yesterday to the Prime Minister.”

The delicate face beside him clouded.

“He won’t accept it.”

Anderson shook his head.  “I think he must.”

Elizabeth looked at him in despair.

“Oh! no.  You oughtn’t to do this—­indeed, indeed you oughtn’t.  It is cowardly—­forgive me!—­unworthy of you.  Oh! can’t you see how the sympathy of everybody who knows—­everybody whose opinion you care for—­”

She stopped a moment, colouring deeply, checked indeed by the thought of a conversation between herself and Philip of the night before.  Anderson interrupted her: 

“The sympathy of one person,” he said hoarsely, “is very precious to me.  But even for her—­”

She held out her hands to him again imploringly—­

“Even for her?—­”

But instead of taking the hands he rose and went out on the balcony a moment, as though to look at the great view.  Then he returned, and stood over her.

“Lady Merton, I am afraid—­it’s no use.  We are not—­we can’t be—­friends.”

“Not friends?” she said, her lip quivering.  “I thought I—­”

He looked down steadily on her upturned face.  His own spoke eloquently enough.  Turning her head away, with fluttering breath, she began to speak fast and brokenly: 

“I, too, have been very lonely.  I want a friend whom I might help—­who would help me.  Why should you refuse?  We are not either of us quite young; what we undertook we could carry through.  Since my husband’s death I—­I have been playing at life.  I have always been hungry, dissatisfied, discontented.  There were such splendid things going on in the world, and I—­I was just marking time.  Nothing to do!—­as much money as I could possibly want—­society of course—­travelling—­and visiting—­and amusing myself—­but oh! so tired all the time.  And somehow Canada has been a great revelation of real, strong, living things—­this great Northwest—­and you, who seemed to explain it to me—­”

“Dear Lady Merton!” His tone was low and full of emotion.  And this time it was he who stooped and took her unresisting hands in his.  She went on in the same soft, pleading tone—­