“Power is reward,” he answered.  “No man is so great that he is indifferent to power, for his greatness depends upon it; and if power was dissipated to-morrow and diluted until none could call himself a leader, we should have a reaction at once and the sheep would grow frightened and bleat for a shepherd.  And the shepherd would very soon appear.”

They stood where the cliffs broke and Bride ended her journey at the sea.  She came gently without any splendid nuptials to the lover of rivers.  Her brief course run, her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water mark.  The yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread Estelle’s sea garden—­an expanse of stone and sand enriched by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with a garland, or weave a wreath for Bride’s grave in the sand.  Here were pale gold of poppies, red gold of lotus and rich lichens that made the sea-worn pebbles shine.  Sea thistle spread glaucous foliage and lifted its blue blossoms; stone-crops and thrifts, tiny trefoils and couch grasses were woven into the sand, and pink storks-bill and silvery convolvulus brought cool colour to this harmony spread beside the purple sea.  The day was one of shadow and sunshine mingled, and from time to time, through passages of grey that lowered the glory of Estelle’s sea garden, a sunburst came to set all glittering once more, to flash upon the river, lighten the masses of distant elm, and throw up the red roofs and grey church tower of Bridetown and her encircling hills.

“What a jolly place it is,” he said taking out his cigar case.

Then they sat in the shadow of a fishing boat, drawn up here, and Raymond lamented the unlovely end of the river.

While he did so, the girl regarded him with affection and a secret interest and entertainment.  For it amused her often to hear him echo thoughts that had come to her in the past.  In a lesser degree her father did the like; but he belonged to a still older generation, and it was with Raymond that she found herself chiefly concerned, when he announced, as original, ideas and discoveries that reflected her own dreams in the past.  Sometimes she thought he was catching up; sometimes, again, she distanced him and felt herself grown up and Raymond still a boy.  Then, sometimes, he would flush a covey of ideas outside her reflections, and so remind her of the things that interested men, in which, as yet, women took no interest.  When he spoke of such things, she strove to learn all that he could teach concerning them.  But soon she found that was not much.  He did not think deeply and she quickly caught him up, if she desired to do so.

Now he uttered just the same, trivial lament that she had uttered when she was a child.  She was pleased, for she rather loved to feel herself older in mind than Raymond.  It added a lustre to friendship and made her happy—­why, she knew not.