But Mrs. Falchion was right. Justine Caron was not suffering much from her immersion; though, speaking professionally, her temperature was higher than the normal. But that might be from some impulse of the moment, for Justine was naturally a little excitable. We walked aside, and, looking at me with a flush of happiness in her face, she said: “You remember one day on the ‘Fulvia’ when I told you that money was everything to me; that I would do all I honourably could to get it?” I nodded. She continued: “It was that I might pay a debt--you know it. Well, money is my god no longer, for I can pay all I owe. That is, I can pay the money, but not the goodness, the noble kindness. He is most good, is he not? The world is better that such men as Captain Galt Roscoe live--ah, you see I cannot quite think of him as a clergyman. I wonder if I ever shall!” She grew suddenly silent and abstracted, and, in the moment’s pause, some ironical words in Mrs. Falchion’s voice floated across the room to me: “It is so strange to see you so. And you preach, and baptise; and marry, and bury, and care for the poor and--ah, what is it?--‘all those who, in this transitory life, are in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity’?... And do you never long for the flesh-pots of Egypt? Never long for”--here her voice was not quite so clear--“for the past?” I was sure that, whatever she was doing, he had been trying to keep the talk, as it were, on the surface. I was equally sure that, to her last question, he would make no reply. Though I was now speaking to Justine Caron, I heard him say quite calmly and firmly: “Yes, I preach, baptise, marry, and bury, and do all I can for those who need help.” “The people about here say that you are good and charitable. You have won the hearts of the mountaineers. But you always had a gift that way.”--I did not like her tone.--“One would almost think you had founded a new dispensation. And if I had drowned yesterday, you would, I suppose, have buried me, and have preached a little sermon about me.--You could have done that better than any one else!... What would you have said in such a case?” There was an earnest, almost a bitter, protest in the reply. “Pardon me, if I cannot answer your question. Your life was saved, and that is all we have to consider, except to be grateful to Providence. The duties of my office have nothing to do with possibilities.” She was evidently torturing him, and I longed to say a word that would torture her. She continued: “And the flesh-pots--you have not answered about them: do you not long for them--occasionally?” “They are of a period,” he answered, “too distant for regret.” “And yet,” she replied softly, “I fancied sometimes in London last year, that you had not outgrown that antique time--those lotos-days.” He made no reply at once, and in the pause Justine and I passed out to the verandah. “How long does Mrs. Falchion intend remaining here, Miss Caron?” I said.