It was as though a miracle had happened. He
remained in her eyes what he really was, a man head and shoulders above
her friends, and in fibre altogether different. Yet to her, and for her,
he was young, and younger than the youngest. In spite of herself, the
longing at her heart cried with a louder voice. She sought to stifle it.
"There is the Road," she cried. "That is first with you. That is what you
really care for."
"No," he replied quietly. She had hoped to take him at a disadvantage.
But he replied at once:
"No. I have thought that out. I do not separate you from the Road. I put
neither first. It is true that there was a time when the Road was
everything to me. But that was before I met you--do you remember?--in the
inn at La Grave."
Violet Oliver looked curiously at Linforth--curiously, and rather
quickly. But it seemed that he at all events did not remember that he had
not come alone down to La Grave.
"It isn't that I have come to care less for the Road," he went on. "Not
by one jot. Rather, indeed, I care more. But I can't dissociate you from
the Road. The Road's my life-work; but it will be the better done if it's
done with your help.
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