Before they reached the summit on this summer afternoon, the little May was sufficiently exercised, and wished to return. Permitting her and Katherine to go back alone, Elise climbed on to the top of the hill. and sitting down in her favourite seat, looked steadily into the west—into the future—into her heart.... Pride is inherently not a bad thing. Nor are its works always evil. Elise’s pride in her love finally rebelled against her evil thinking of her lover. It preferred to think good of him, and it began to construct a defence of him.... First it set up that she had refused him pointblank, had denied her own love, and that after such a dismissal she certainly could demand from him nothing in the way of loyalty. Further, before dismissing him she had led him on to hope, no doubt about that; and in the light of her conduct his denunciation was just: she had mocked him—he was justified in thinking she was unspeakably false. What right, then, had she now to demand of his love that it should be loyal, that it should sacrifice his political future, that it should confess to a hope,—or even to a desire, if he had so meant it? Her heart admitted she was estopped.... Yet it could not be content and dismiss the matter from her thinking.... Had he meant to deny desire in denying hope? She asked herself the question.... Could one negative hope without admitting desire? ... Is there not desire in the dead as in the living hope? Do not hope and hopeless premise desire? ... Elise’s mind was wandering in the maze of the psychology of hope, when she looked about to see coming up toward her _the man_. * * * * * Rutledge caught a train Washington bound in thirty minutes after reading Elise’s fragment of a letter. He sent a telegram to his campaign manager, Robertson: "I am called north on business. Will miss Greenville meeting. Represent me there. It is probable I can make Laurens meeting Tuesday." The hurry of his departure over, he sat in the Pullman and persuaded himself that he was undecided as to what he should do and was giving a judicial consideration to the advisability of marrying a woman sister-in-law to a negro: but the while he thought he was debating the matter Kale Lineberger was whisking the New York and New Orleans Limited along the curves of the Big Thicketty and across the bridges of the Broad and the Catawba—speeding him on toward the girl—as fast as an expert handling of throttle, lever and "air" could turn the driving-wheels of the mammoth "1231" and keep her feet on the rails.... As Rutledge in the cool of Sunday morning stepped from the rear sleeper, Jim McQueen climbed down from the engine, oil-can in hand. "Well," said Jim, taking a look at his watch, "here’s one Southern train under a Washington shed on time,—if I do say it, as shouldn’t." ... Rutledge had not lost ten seconds in his coming to Elise.