"It is at least as good as yours for marrying _him_," he broke in quickly. "At least it has to do with you--with me--with our happiness--with mine at any rate! Do you remember when you first told me your name--The World's Desire I called it--the woman with the red-gold hair, the red-gold hem to her garment, the red-gold apple in her hand--you are that to me--Erda! give me my heart's desire--" His voice--low, quick, passionate--thrilled through her. She saw herself as she had seen herself then. "Yes! it has to do with you, with me!" she echoed desperately, "but only we two." "No!--" he interrupted--"with more than that, surely!" In the pause which followed, one vision faded in another, and her own wish, that if she ever had a son he might be as this man, came to make her remember Father Ninian's words, "I can wish no better wish for the world!" But Father Ninian could not have said so to her. _She_ could do better for the world in the other life, the other work. The very self-sacrifice of it attracted her, vague though the sense of that was, as yet. "Sir Lancelot," she said at last, "I am very sensible of the honour--" "Don't--for heaven's sake," he interrupted. "That is--excuse me--bunkum." She felt glad of the faint resentment which came to her aid. "I am, all the same," she continued; "but it is impossible. Perhaps if I did not look forward as I do; perhaps if I only sought happiness; but--" she clasped her hands tightly and the militant look came back to her face--"I am sworn to another work--the noblest work of all--to bring light to those that sit in darkness." Lance gave an odd little laugh, full of bitterness. "You leave me out in the black night, anyhow," he said. True enough, in one way, for the quick dusk had closed in around them; but as he spoke, a great white shaft of light like a moon-ray shot, almost as if in denial--widening on its way, from the shadowy stretches beyond the river; shot waveringly, as if uncertain, until, focussing itself full on the verandah, it turned the dusk to day. "The search-light!" cried Mrs. Smith, clapping her daintily gloved little hands. "Eugene will be so pleased. He couldn't positively swallow a mouthful at lunch because, when he thought all was right, something went wrong. That's why he didn't come, Miss Shepherd," she added, for the light had effectually joined the scattered groups into one. "I positively couldn't tear him away, but I made him promise to turn the thing on here if he succeeded. And he has. Isn't it splendid?" Mrs. Campbell looked doubtful. "It's just too much like the last day, comin' unawares, and makin' a' things manifest, for my taste. An' I wonder what Dr. James will say to it?" "I wonder what the natives will say to it?" said Vincent Dering, looking across at Lance. "Say!" echoed the tart lady. "I know what they should say--that, of course, we know a great deal more than they do."