Unorna herself believed in everything which strengthened and developed that conviction, and especially in the influences of time and place.  It appeared to her a fortunate circumstance, when she at last determined to overcome her pride, that the resolution should have formed itself exactly a month after she had so successfully banished the memory of Beatrice from the mind of the man she loved.  She felt sure of producing a result as effectual if, this time, she could work the second change in the same place and under the same circumstances as the first.  And to this end everything was in her favour.  She needed not to close her eyes to fancy that thirty days had not really passed between then and now, as she left her house in the afternoon with the Wanderer by her side.

He had come back and had found her once more herself, calm, collected, conscious of her own powers.  No suspicion of the real cause of the disturbance he had witnessed crossed his mind, still less could he guess what thing she meditated as she directed their walk towards that lonely place by the river which had been the scene of her first great effort.  She talked lightly as they went, and he, in that strange humour of peaceful, well-satisfied indifference which possessed him, answered her in the same strain.  It was yet barely afternoon, but there was already a foretaste of coming evening in the chilly air.

“I have been thinking of what you said this morning,” she said, suddenly changing the current of the conversation.  “Did I thank you for your kindness?” She smiled as she laid her hand gently upon his arm, to cross a crowded street, and she looked up into his quiet face.

“Thank me?  For what?  On the contrary—­I fancied that I had annoyed you.”

“Perhaps I did not quite understand it all at first,” she answered thoughtfully.  “It is hard for a woman like me to realise what it would be to have a brother—­or a sister, or any one belonging to me.  I needed to think of the idea.  Do you know that I am quite alone in the world?”

The Wanderer had accepted her as he found her, strangely alone, indeed, and strangely independent of the world, a beautiful, singularly interesting woman, doing good, so far as he knew, in her own way, separated from ordinary existence by some unusual circumstances, and elevated above ordinary dangers by the strength and the pride of her own character.  And yet, indolent and indifferent as he had grown of late, he was conscious of a vague curiosity in regard to her story.  Keyork either really knew nothing, or pretended to know nothing of her origin.

“I see that you are alone,” said the Wanderer.  “Have you always been so?”

“Always.  I have had an odd life.  You could not understand it, if I told you of it.”

“And yet I have been lonely too—­and I believe I was once unhappy, though I cannot think of any reason for it.”

“You have been lonely—­yes.  But yours was another loneliness more limited, less fatal, more voluntary.  It must seem strange to you—­I do not even positively know of what nation I was born.”