“It is only a matter of earnestness,” he replied, “and a certain aptitude for forming phrases quickly.  No one can feel deeply about anything and not find themselves more or less eloquent when they come to talk about it.  By the bye, have you ever met Selingman?”

She shook her head.

“My uncle knew him.  He tells me that he asked him here to-night.  I wish that he had come.  And yet, I am not sure.  Some of his writings I have hated.  He, too, is a theorist, isn’t he?  I wonder—­”

She paused, and looked expectant.

“I often wonder,” she went on, “is there nothing else in your life at all except this passionate altruism?  In your younger life, for instance, weren’t there ever any sports or occupations that you cared for?”

“Yes,” he admitted slowly, “for some years I did a good many of the usual things.”

“And now the desire for them has all gone,” she asked, “haven’t you any personal hopes or dreams in connection with life?  Isn’t there anything you look forward to or desire for yourself?”

“I seem to have so little time.  And yet, one has dreams—­one always must have dreams, you know.”

“Tell me about yours?” she insisted.

He sat up abruptly.  Her fingers fell upon his arm.

“We will go and sit under my rose tree,” she suggested.

They moved back into the winter garden until they came to a seat at its furthest extremity.  A fountain was playing a few yards away, and clusters of great pink roses were drooping down from some trellis-work before them.

“Here, at least,” she continued, as she leaned back, “we will not be tempted to talk seriously.  Tell me about yourself?  Do you never look forward into the future?  Have you no personal ambitions or hopes?”

He looked steadily ahead of him.

“I am only a very ordinary man,” he replied.  “Like every one else, sometimes I look up to the clouds.”

“Tell me what you see there?” she begged.

He was silent.  The sound of voices now came to them like a distant murmur, a background to the slow falling of the water into the fountain basin.

“Lady Elisabeth,” he said, “it is not always possible to tell even one’s own self what the thoughts mean which come into one’s brain.”

“You will not even try to tell me, then?”

“I must not,” he answered.

She sat with her hands folded in front of her, her head drooped a little.  Maraton felt himself suddenly at war with a whole multitude of emotions.  Was it possible that this thing had come to him, that a woman could take the great place in his life, a woman not of his kind, one who could not even share the passion which was to have absorbed every impulse of his existence to the end?  She was of a different world.  Perhaps it had all been a mistake.  Perhaps it would have been better for him to have stayed outside, to have never crossed the little borderland which led into the land of compromises.  And all the time, while his brain was at work, something stronger, more wonderful, was throbbing in his heart.  He moved restlessly in his place.  Her ungloved hand lay within a few inches of him.  He suddenly caught it.