Lloyd shook her head.

“I don’t—­I can’t believe you.”

“Do you want to see me go,” demanded Bennett, “after this last experience?  Do you urge me to it?”

Lloyd turned her head away, leaning it against one of the veranda pillars.  A sudden dimness swam in her eyes, the choking ache she knew so well came to her throat.  Ah, life was hard for her.  The very greatness of her nature drove from her the happiness so constantly attained by little minds, by commonplace souls.  When was it to end, this continual sacrifice of inclination to duty, this eternal abnegation, this yielding up of herself, her dearest, most cherished wishes to the demands of duty and the great world?

“I don’t know what I want,” she said faintly.  “It don’t seem as if one could be happy—­very long.”

All at once she moved close to him and laid her cheek upon the arm of his chair and clasped his hand in both her own, murmuring:  “But I have you now, I have you now, no matter what is coming to us.”

A sense of weakness overcame her.  What did she care that Bennett should fulfil his destiny, should round out his career, should continue to be the Great Man?  It was he, Bennett, that she loved—­not his greatness, not his career.  Let it all go, let ambition die, let others less worthy succeed in the mighty task.  What were fame and honour and glory and the sense of a divinely appointed duty done at last to the clasp of his hand and the sound of his voice?

In November of that year Lloyd and Bennett were married.  Two guests only assisted at the ceremony.  These were Campbell and his little daughter Hattie.

X.

The months passed; Christmas came and went.  Until then the winter had been unusually mild, but January set in with a succession of vicious cold snaps and great blustering winds out of the northeast.  Lloyd and Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their new home at Medford.  They had no desire to travel, and Bennett’s forthcoming book demanded his attention.  Adler stayed on about the house.  He and the dog Kamiska were companions inseparable.  At long intervals visitors presented themselves—­Dr. Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett’s.  But the great rush of interviewers, editors, and projectors of marvellous schemes that had crowded Bennett’s anterooms during the spring and early summer was conspicuously dwindling.  The press ceased to speak of him; even his mail had fallen away.  Now, whenever the journals of the day devoted space to arctic exploration, it was invariably in reference to the English expedition wintering on the Greenland coast.  That world that had clamoured so loudly upon Bennett’s return, while, perhaps, not yet forgetting him, was already ignoring him, was looking in other directions.  Another man was in the public eye.

But in every sense these two—­Lloyd and Bennett—­were out of the world.  They had freed themselves from the current of affairs.  They stood aside while the great tide went careering past swift and turbulent, and one of them at least lacked even the interest to look on and watch its progress.