The name roused him and he looked up.  Their eyes met and a strange gleam—­a shock, perhaps, of sympathetic feeling, flashed upon either face.  The lawyer saw and instinctively retreated from out the circle of light cast by the lantern; but the men at the stream’s edge heard nothing.  The flash of something white had caught their eyes and one man was reaching for it.

“Georgian,” came in astonished repetition from the bereaved man’s lips.

“She would wish it,” persisted the other with still deeper and more urgent meaning.

[Illustration:  A slight, dark form stole from the shadows and laid a hand on the stooping man’s shoulder.]

Then in a whisper so penetrating that even Mr. Harper caught its least inflection through all the thunder of the waterfall, “She loved you.”

Ah! the enchantment, the feminine persuasiveness, the heart-moving sincerity which breathed through that simple phrase!  From lips so untutored, it seemed marvelous.  Ransom was not insensible to its power, for he quivered under her hand and his eyes took on a look of wonder.  But he made no attempt to answer, even by a sign.  He seemed content for that one instant just to listen and to look.

The man hanging over the stream drew back his arm.  He had been deceived by a bit of froth; some of it clung yet to his fingers.

“Come,” entreated the girl, her face emerging softly into the light, as she stooped lower over the lantern.  “Come!” she had taken him by the hand and was drawing him gently upward.

With a leap he was on his feet and had thrown her off.  Some memory had come to make her entreaty hateful.

“No,” he cried, “no!  Here is my place and here will I stay.  You are a stranger to me!  You drove her to this act, and you shall not cajole me into forgetting it.”

He had spoken loudly; not so much because he remembered her affliction, but because of the roar of the fall and his own overwhelming passion.  The result was that the lawyer caught every word; possibly the workers at the water-edge did also; for some of them quickly turned their heads.  But she, though she stopped short in the spot where he had pushed her, gave no evidence of hearing his words or even of resenting his manner.

“Won’t you come?” she falteringly pleaded, pointing towards the house with its twinkling lights.  “You are cold; you are shuddering; they will do the searching who don’t mind night or wet.  Follow Anitra, Anitra who is so sorry.”

“No!” he shouted.  His tone, his look, were almost those of a madman.  He even put out his hands towards her in repulsion.  He seemed to cast her away.  This gesture, if not his words, reached her understanding.  The lawyer saw her sway, fling back her young head with its disheveled locks to the night, and fall moaning pitifully to the ground.  Here she lay still, with the wet grass all about her and the last lingering drops of rain beating on her huddled form.