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"Marian, that's rank blasphemy. Fancy my hearing that, especially, too, on the night of my parting with you! No, my darling, all I want you to have is hope, hope and courage, and not too much ambition, dearest. Mine has been comparatively but a lotus-eating existence hitherto; to-morrow I begin the battle of life."

"But slightly armed for the conflict, my poor Walter."

"I don't allow that, Marian. Youth, health, and energy are not bad weapons to have on one's side, and with your love in the background----"

"And the chance of achieving fame and fortune for yourself--keep that in the foreground!"

"That is to me, in every way, less than the other; but it is, of course, an additional spur. And now----?"

And then? When two lovers are on the eve of parting, their conversation is scarcely very interesting to any one else. Marian and Walter talked the usual pleasant nonsense, and vowed the usual constancy, took four separate farewells of each other, and parted with broken accents and lingering hand-clasps, and streaming eyes. But when Marian Ashurst sat before her toilet-glass that night in the room which had so long been her own, and which she was so soon to vacate, she thought of what Walter Joyce had said as to his future, and wondered whether, after all, she had not miscalculated the strength, not the courage, of the knight whom she had selected to wear her colours in his helm in the great contest.