“Yes,” he said quickly, “back to the life for which you have been hungering ever since you came, back to all those interests which you threw away, and then so bitterly regretted. Now your path is clear before you, and you can go straight on, and forget that you ever took a side-turning which led you to uncongenial pastures. Not every one can do that.” “The old life!” she said wildly, “what does one want with the old life? What do I care about returning? Why should I go home?” For a moment Ben Overleigh’s heart leapt within him. _Why should she go home?_ These words were on his very lips, and others came rushing afterwards, struggling and wrestling for utterance. The storm raging around and within him for so many weeks, now assailed him with all its fury--and left him standing as firm as those mountains yonder. “Why should you stay?” he said calmly; “you have said all along that this Californian life was detestable to you, and that you could never reconcile yourself to it. Have you forgotten that afternoon when you poured out your confidences to me, and eased your mind of your misery? Do you remember how you spoke of the isolation, the fearful distance from home, and the absence of stimulus, and the daily drudgery, and the mistake you had made in coming out to such a wretched land, and to such a starved existence?” “Oh, I have not forgotten,” she said excitedly; “that was the first long breath I’d taken since I left England.” “And do you remember how you said that if you’d only realised what you were coming to, nothing would have made you come,” he continued deliberately,--“neither love nor friendship, nor duty nor regret; and that if you had been a man, you would have preferred to starve in your old career rather than settle in such a land as this?” “Yes, yes,” she broke in, “and I meant every word I said.” “And do you remember how you asked me what it was we found to like in the life,” he continued, “and whether we would not throw it up to-morrow if we could, and what in the name of heaven we got in exchange for all we had lost?” “Yes, yes, I remember,” she said breathlessly; “and do you remember what you said then about the women?” “I said that we men gained in every particular, and that it was a life for men and not for women,” he answered. “Ah, but there was something else,” she said, almost desperately. “You said they came off badly here, but that their one salvation was to love passionately, desperately--” “And if I did say so,” he said, turning to her fiercely, “what has that to do with you and me?” There was no mistaking the ring of contempt in his voice. She smarted in every fibre of her, and instantly gathered herself together. “No, you are right,” she said, with a quick nervous laugh. “It has not anything to do with you and me.”