"Never!" she exclaimed, with a little stamp of the foot. "Never! I shall win my way as a woman or not at all." Moreton was beginning to comprehend, in a measure, the really pathetic hopelessness of Miss Crabb's intellectual predicament. To his mind she appeared a heroine with a self-imposed task quite as great as that of Joan of Arc. Like Joan, she must at last be man's victim. He could see the stake set and the fagots heaped for her already. It now seemed a mighty blessing of providence that she was not beautiful, that she was positively ugly and not at all likely to attract men. He had the English admiration for pluck and he felt a great desire to help her; but there was no way. Evidently she did not possess any genius and was only gifted with a shrewd, quick mind and a hungry imagination. She was mistaking notoriety for just fame and was deluding herself with the belief that her burning desire for success was proof positive of her power to succeed. Nevertheless her attitude was heroic and he wished her a better fate than was sure to befall her. "But you must not commit the folly of setting yourself against men," he presently said, his voice taking on a persuasive tone; "you must recognize their power and the necessity of winning their confidence and help." "I have tried that turn," she replied with a short laugh that had a ring of derision in it, "and it's no use. A woman must have beauty before she can influence men. All the wisdom of Minerva could not have compassed what Cleopatra's----" "Hold," cried Moreton, with an affectation of lightness which he did not feel, "you are slandering my sex, or, at least, I am an exception. Not that I don't admit the power of beauty, but you put the rule too savagely, don't you know. Why, you really frighten me with your suggestion of masculine depravity!" She laughed and changed the subject. They continued walking to and fro and chatting in a broken way with the sough of the wind and the swash of the river filling up the spaces. "Some day," she said, recurring to the subject always uppermost in her mind, and turning to leave him, "some day my ship will come in." Moreton breathed freer when she was gone. Her state of ferment, of restless effort, tired him. Two or three hours later when he and Reynolds sat by a window of the latter's room, smoking cigars, he said: "Miss Crabb told me something a while ago that surprised and touched me."