“Oh, the smell of the trees, of the grass!  Isn’t it wonderful; isn’t it wonderful?” And a few seconds later, quite irrelevantly:  “And, after all, we failed.”

At once Lloyd was all aroused, defending him against himself.

“Failed!  And you say that?  If you did not reach the Pole, what then?  The world will judge you by results perhaps, and the world’s judgment will be wrong.  Is it nothing that you have given the world an example of heroism—­”

“Oh, don’t call it that.”

“Of heroism, of courage, of endurance?  Is it nothing that you have overcome obstacles before which other men would have died?  Is it nothing that you have shown us all how to be patient, how to be strong?  There are some things better even than reaching the Pole.  To suffer and be calm is one of them; not to give up—­never to be beaten—­is another.  Oh, if I were a man!  Ten thousand, a hundred thousand people are reading to-night of what you have done—­of what you have done, you understand, not of what you have failed to do.  They have seen—­you have shown them what the man can do who says I will, and you have done a little more, have gone a little further, have been a little braver, a little hardier, a little nobler, a little more determined than any one has ever been before.  Whoever fails now cannot excuse himself by saying that he has done as much as a man can do.  He will have to remember the men of the Freja.  He will have to remember you.  Don’t you suppose I am proud of you; don’t you suppose that I am stronger and better because of what you have done?  Do you think it is nothing for me to be sitting here beside you, here in this park—­to be—­yes, to be with you?  Can’t you understand?  Isn’t it something to me that you are the man you are; not the man whose name the people are shouting just now, not the man to whom a king gave a bit of ribbon and enamel, but the man who lived like a man, who would not die just because it was easier to die than to live, who fought like a man, not only for himself but for the lives of those he led, who showed us all how to be strong, and how strong one could be if one would only try?  What does the Pole amount to?  The world wants men, great, strong, harsh, brutal men—­men with purposes, who let nothing, nothing, nothing stand in their way.”

“You mean Bennett,” said Ferriss, looking up quickly.  “You commenced by speaking of me, but it’s Bennett you are talking of now.”

But he caught her glance and saw that she was looking steadfastly at him—­at him.  A look was in her face, a light in her dull-blue eyes, that he had never seen there before.

“Lloyd,” he said quietly, “which one of us, Bennett or I, were you speaking of just then?  You know what I mean; which one of us?”

“I was speaking of the man who was strong enough to do great things,” she said.

Ferriss drew the stumps of his arms from his pockets and smiled at them grimly.