By a happy chance he had struck the right note. Tears came into the girl's eyes. For the first time she was able to disassociate the man from his work. She lost her own sense of disappointment in womanly pity for the man who had been defeated while battling against great odds. “And bless you for the tears standing in those eyes!” said Roderick. They walked on. Somehow her hand found its way beneath his arm. They spoke but little. Roderick's pulses fluttered with a new hope; but his perceptions into the nature of women were too keen to allow him to force an advantage. He wore his stricken air, yet subtly conveyed to her the deep comfort of her sympathy. He pressed her hand against his side and left her to work out the situation for herself under these excellent conditions. Ella had never felt so near him. The unity in their golden dreams had not bound them so closely as this unity in catastrophe. For even when the dreams were most golden, she had haunting misgivings that they were but visions. Outraged by Sylvester's trampling on her heart, sickened at herself by her years reckless follies, eager, with all a proud girl's passion, to vindicate herself, to follow some noble standard, she had caught at the first that flaunted by and compelled herself imperiously to believe in it. This forced faith had been the strenuous labour of her inner life. She had armed herself in triple brass against Lady Milmo's shafts of flippant satire, against Matthew Lanyon's kindly wisdom, against her own common sense. The Colony would be merely a paradise of cranks. No serious artist would throw away his or her career in such a Cloud-cuckoo-land. She herself, at the best but a well-taught amateur painter in water-colours, what was she doing in that galley? She set aside reason. To believe in Roderick, she must believe in the Colony. To believe in the Colony, she must believe in Roderick. The two were inextricably interfused. Realisation of the dreams was her only justification for marrying the man. The man's personality and enthusiasm for an ideal had overpowered her. She would not think. She was young, inexperienced, warm-natured, seeing things out of proportion. Flight from the self she had deemed dishonoured was her only chance of salvation; and she mistook the imaginary cries behind her, hounding her onward, for the voice of inexorable necessity. If Roderick could accomplish it, the Colony was a glorious thing. The Colony accomplished, Roderick was the conqueror to whom she must yield. When the dreams were most golden she saw him such, and they were near together.