"It is impossible!"  said I, stung to resistance.
'' You know he has proved the falseness
of your creed; he will never return to it. His
conscience is his own."

"But not his passions. He is young — I am
old. He will be a priest yet."

With a soft hand-pressure, M. Anastasius
left me.

Now began the most horrible phase of my
existence. For four weeks we had to live
in the same vessel; bounded and shut up
together, — Anastasius, Alexis, and I; meeting
continually, in the soft bland atmosphere
of courteous calm; always in public — never
alone.

From various accidental circumstances, I
knew how, night and day, M. Anastasius was
bending all the powers of his enormous intellect,
his wonderful moral force, to compass
his cherished ends with regard to Alexis
Saltram.

An overwhelming dread took possession of
me. I ceased to think of myself at all — my
worldly hopes, prospects, or joys — over which
this man's influence had long hung like an
accursed shadow; a sun turned into darkness,
— the more terrible because it had once
been a sun. I seemed to see M. Anastasius
only with relation to this young man, over
whom I knew he once had so great power.
Would it return — and in what would it result?
Not merely in the breaking off any
feeble tie to me. I scarcely trembled for that,
since, could it be so broken, it was not worth
trembling for. No! I trembled for Alexis'
soul.

It was a soul, I had gradually learnt — more
than ever perhaps in this voyage, which every
day seemed a brief life, so full of temptation,
contest, trial — a soul pure as God's own
heaven, that hung over us hour by hour in
its steady tropic blue; deep as the seas that
rolled around us. Like them, stirring with
the lightest breath, often tempest-tossed,
liable to adverse winds and currents; yet
keeping far, far below the surface a divine
tranquillity, — diviner than any mere stagnant
calm. And this soul full of all rich impulses,
emotions, passions, — a soul which, because it
could strongly sympathise with, might be
able to regenerate its kind, M. Anastasius
wanted to make into a Catholic Jesuit priest,
— a mere machine, to work as he, the head
machine, chose!

This was why (the thought suddenly struck
me, like lightning) he had told each of us
severally those two lies. Because we were
young, we might love — we might marry;
there was nothing externally to prevent us.
And then what would become of his scheme?

I think there was born in me — while the
most passive slave to lawful, loving rule — a
faculty of savage resistance to all unlawful,
unjust power; also a something of the female
wild-beast, which, if alone, will lie tame and
cowed in her solitary den, to be shot at by any
daring hunter; whereas if she be not alone — if
she have any love-instinct at work for cubs or
mate — her whole nature changes from terror
to daring, from cowardice to fury.

When, as we neared the tropics, I saw
Alexis' cheek growing daily paler, and his eye
more sunken and restless with some secret
struggle, in the which M. Anastasius never
left him for a day, an hour, a minute, I
became not unlike that poor wild-beast
mother. It had gone ill with the relentless
hunter of souls if he had come near me then.

But he did not. For the last week of our
voyage, M. Anastasius kept altogether out of
my way.

It was nearly over, — we were in sight of
the shores of Hispaniola. Then we should
land. My estates lay in this island. Mr. Saltram's
business, I was aware, called him to
Barbadoes; thence again beyond seas. Once
parted, I well knew that if the power and
will of my guardian could compass anything
— and it seemed to me that they were able to
compass everything in the whole wide earth
— Alexis and I should never meet again.

In one last struggle after life  — after the
fresh, wholesome, natural life which contact
with this young man's true spirit had given
me — I determined to risk all.

It was a rich tropic twilight. We were all
admiring it, just as three ordinary persons
might do who were tending peacefully to
their voyage-end. Yet Alexis did not seem
at peace.  A settled, deadly pallor dwelt on
his face, — a restless anxiety troubled his whole
mien.

M. Anastasius said, noticing the glowing
tropic scenery which already dimly appeared
in our shoreward view,

"It is very grand; but Europe is more
suited to us grave Northerns. You will think
so, Alexis, when you are once again there."

"Are you returning? " I asked of Mr.
Saltram.

My cousin answered for him, " Yes,
immediately."

Alexis started; then leaned over the poop
in silence, and without denial.

I felt profoundly sad. My interest in Alexis
Saltram was at this time — and but for the
compulsion of opposing power, might have
ever been — entirely apart from love. We
might have gone on merely as tender friends
for years and years, — at least I might. Therefore
no maidenly consciousness warned me
from doing what my sense of right impelled
towards one who held the same
faith, and whose life seemed strangled in the
same mesh of circumstances which had nearly
paralysed my own.

"Alexis, this is our last evening; you will
sail for Europe — and we shall be friends no
more. Will you take one twilight stroll
with me? "— and I extended my hand.

If he had hesitated, or shrunk back, one
second, I would have flung him to the winds,
and fought my own warfare alone; I was
strong enough now. But he sprang to me,