Then they went on again, and he, too, walked quickly, supposing that he could soon pass them and get in front.  It is not the matter of a moment, however, to pass people who are walking at a rate of speed almost equal to one’s own.  He had the awkwardness of feeling, that, whether he would or no, he was obliged to intrude upon them.  He noticed they were not walking near together; but when one is tramping and picking steps as best one can in mud that is hidden in darkness, it is, perhaps, more natural that two people on a wide road should give one another a wide berth.  At any rate, for a minute all three were making their way through puddles and over rough places in silence.  Then, when Alec thought he had got a few paces in advance, he heard the lady speak again, and of himself.

“Did you think you knew that man?”

There was no answer.  Alec felt angry with her companion that he should dare to sulk so obviously.  After a minute or two more of fast walking, she said again: 

“I can’t think where he has gone to.  Do you see him anywhere?”

To this again there was no answer.  Alec naturally went the quicker that he might get out of hearing.  As he did so he wondered much that his fellow-travellers went so fast, or rather that the lady did, for she, although some way behind, seemed to keep very near to him.

On they went in silence for ten minutes more, when the lady again took up her reproachful theme.  Her voice was quieter now, but amid the harmonious sounds of wind and river he still heard it distinctly.  The clear enunciation of her words seemed to pierce through the baffling noises of the night as a ray of light pierces through darkness, albeit that there was excitement in her tones, and her speech was, interspersed with breathless pauses.

“I have been rude; but you insisted upon my rudeness, now you are offended by it.  So be it—­let me say something else!  I don’t much believe now in all the sentiment that used to seem so noble to me about forgetting oneself.  No thoughtful person can forget himself, and no candid person says he has done it.  What we need is to think more of ourselves—­to think so much of ourselves that all aims but the highest are beneath us—­are impossible to our own dignity.  What we chiefly need is ambition.”

She stopped to take breath.  It seemed to Alec she came near enough to see him as she continued.  He could think of nothing, however, but what she was saying.  He felt instinctively that it was because of haste and some cause of excitement, not in spite of them, that this lady could speak as she now did.

“Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action,” she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, “so there must be a self-regard which is good—­too good to degrade itself to worldly ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam—­the gold of unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness—­which makes the ordinary motive of the ordinary good man.”