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“Suddenly an intense brightness fell about me and I saw, near and afar, other figures each bearing similar burdens. The light passed away, and I drew near the man and questioned him.

“‘What rough load is that you carry?’ I asked.

“‘The burden of conventionality,’ answered the man, wearily and with a note of surprise in his voice.

“‘Why do you bear it needlessly?’ I remonstrated.

“‘We dare not drop it,’ said the woman, hopelessly, ‘lest that light, which is the searchlight of public opinion, return, showing us different from the others.’

“Even as she spoke the illumination again fell upon us, and by its brightness I saw a drop of blood gather slowly from the wounds on the woman’s hand and fall into the dust at her feet.”

A silence fell upon the inmates of the tiny muffled office.

“But the burden isn’t useless,” said the man, gently. “The condemnation of society is an hourly reality. From the patronage of others we live. The sun burns us, but we submit, for in return it gives life.”

The woman arose with an abrupt movement, and looked down at him coldly.

“Are you a man, and use those arguments?” An expression akin to contempt formed about her mouth. “Are you afraid of a united voice the individuals of which you despise?”

The first hint of restrained passion was in the answering voice.

“You taunt me in safety, for you know I love you.” He looked up at her unhesitatingly. “Man’s law is artificial, that I know; but it’s made for conditions which are artificial, and for such it’s right. Were we as in the beginning, Nature’s law, which beside the law of man is no law, would be right; but we’re of the world as it is now. Things are as they are, and we must conform or pay the price.” He hesitated. His face settled back into a mask. “And that price of non-conformity is too high,” he completed steadily.

The eyes of the woman blazed and her hands tightened convulsively.

“Oh, you’re frozen–fossilized, man! I called you man! You’re not a man at all, but a nineteenth century machine! You’re run like a motor, from a power house; by the force of conventional thought, over wires of red tape. Fie on you! I thought to meet a human being, not a lifeless thing.” She looked at him steadily, her chin in the air, a world of scorn in her face. “Go on sweating beneath the useless load! Go on building your structure of artificiality that ends centuries from now in nothingness! Here’s happiness to you in your empty life of self-effacement, with your machine prompted acts, years considered!” Without looking at him, one hand made scornful motion of dismissal. “Good-bye, ghost of man; I wash my hands of you.”

“Wait, Eleanor!” The man sprang to his feet, the mask lifting from his face, and there stood revealed a multitude of emotions, unseen of the world, that flashed from the depths of his brown eyes and quivered in the angles of his mouth. He came quickly over and took her hand between his own.

“I’m proud of you,”–a world of tenderness was in his voice–“unspeakably proud–for I love you. I’ve done my best to keep us apart, yet all the time I believed with you. Nature is higher than man, and no power on earth can prove it otherwise.” He looked into the softest of brown eyes, and his voice trembled. “Beside you the world is nothing. Its approval or its condemnation are things to be laughed at. With you I challenge conventionality–society–everything.” He bent over her hand almost reverently and touched it softly with his lips.

“Farewell–until I come,” he said.

CHAPTER II–THE LEAP

A man and a woman emerged from the dilapidated day-car as it drew up before the tiny, sanded station which marked the terminus of the railway. The man was tall, clean-shaven, quick of step and of glance. The woman was likewise tall, well-gloved, and, strange phenomenon at a country station, carried no parcels.