"There is something else," said Miranda. "Your search will cost money. Every farthing of that I must pay. You will promise me that?" "Yes." "I wrote to M. Fournier yesterday. He will supply you. There is one thing more. This search will interrupt your career." "It will, no doubt," he assented readily, and sitting down upon a seat he spoke to her words which she never forgot. "The quaint thing is that I have always been afraid lest a woman should break my career. I lived as a boy high up on the Yorkshire hills, two miles above a busy town. All day that town whirred in the hollow below. I could see it from my bedroom window, and all night the lights blazed in the factories; and when I went down into its streets there were always grimed men speeding upon their business. There was a certain grandeur about it which impressed me,--the perpetual shuffle of the looms, the loud, clear song of the wheels. That seemed to me the life to live. And I made up my mind that no woman should interfere. A brake on the wheel going up hill, a whip in the driver's hand going down,--that was what I thought of woman until I met you." "And proved it true," cried Miranda. "And learned that there are better things than getting on," said Charnock. Miranda turned to him with shining eyes, and in a voice which left him in no doubt as to the significance of her words, she cried:-- "My dear, we are Love's derelicts, you and I," and so stopped and said no more. They went back to the hotel and lunched together and came out again to the geraniums and bellas sombras of the Alameda. But they talked no more in this strain. They were just a man and a woman, and the flaming sword kept their lips apart. But they knew it and were not aggrieved, for being a man and a woman they knew not grievances. The evening came down upon Gibraltar, the riding lanterns glimmered upon the masts in the bay; away to the left the lighthouse on Europa Point shot out its yellow column of light; above, the Spanish sky grew purple and rich with innumerable stars. "The boat leaves early," said Charnock. "I will say good-bye now." Miranda caught the hand which he held out to her and held it against her breast. "But I shall see you again--once--please, once," she said, "when you bring Ralph back to me;" and so they separated in the Alameda.