Mrs. Ransom appeared to be lighter-hearted than at any other time since the adventure at the ruin. Her face was touched with a charming color and she followed Lapham's shallow chatter with smiling attention. It was from her that Reynolds finally caught the ability to forget himself and to fall into the spirit that ruled the rest of the company. Once engaged, he put forth his powers with good effect. For Lapham's benefit he described the Derby and the _Grand Prix_, a pigeon shoot in England where the stake was a thousand pounds, angling in Scotland and some hunting adventures in Algiers. From sport he easily drifted to art and from art into the ever wonderful and fascinating scenery of Switzerland and Italy. It was Agnes who led him on to speak of Paris and Rome, the two cities of every young woman's dream. She was full of the thought of going with him to the old world. It was intoxicating her. How far away it would be--that life beyond the sea--from the dreary, sorrowful pool of her narrow and bitter experience! That night in the quiet of her chamber she thought it all over, and she was dreaming of it when next morning the mocking-birds awoke her. Reynolds, too, went to his room with an almost light heart. From his window he saw Lapham, with a little sail set, go up the river before the night breeze, in the light of a crescent moon that hung over in the west. "I will return to Birmingham to-morrow," he thought. He was in haste to get his affairs all arranged and then come back and persuade Agnes to name the earliest day possible for their marriage. He felt a mighty impatience, as if each moment endangered the cup of happiness now bubbling at his lips. But the thought of going back to the mountains chilled him. Why need he go at all? Why should any sordid consideration enter into the discussion of his plans? Had he not already shut out of his life the dreamy hermitage and all that pertained to it? He tried to imagine a line drawn across the past at a point on this side of all his unprofitable experiences, a line over which he would teach his memory not to cross. Could he not, by a supreme effort of will, tear wholly away from his old self, as from a chrysalis sheath, purify himself and spend the rest of his days in the summer atmosphere of a calm and peaceful life? How it tormented him to perceive his lack of genuine courage and sincerity in this exacting crisis! He tried not to know that his new hopes and desires were not borne up by an underswell of true repentance. The selfishness of mere regret and remorse taunted him insidiously, whilst the happiness that beckoned him on was tricked in sensuous tinsel-tints, the exponents of a very low power of good. He struggled fiercely, silently, fighting down in detail the troops of phantoms that beset him. Finally he cheated himself into believing, or feigning to believe, that he had gained the victory. The field is clear, he thought, I am a man once more.