"The trouble is that if I do not go I shall never have the right to come back again," he told her.
"Then," replied the girl very softly, "you wish to come back?"
"That is why I am going. There are those spurs to win. I have to make my mark."
"But it is sometimes a little difficult to make one's mark, isn't it? You may be ever so long, and it must be a little hazardous in that horrible cañon."
"If it gives me the right to come back, I think it will be very well worth while."
"But suppose you don't succeed, after all?"
"That," admitted Nasmyth, "is a thing I daren't contemplate, because, if it happened, it is scarcely likely that any of my friends at Bonavista would ever be troubled with me again."
Violet looked away from him. "Ah," she said, "don't you think that would be a little hard on them? Is it very easy for you to go away?"
The restraint Nasmyth had imposed upon himself suddenly deserted him. He moved a little nearer to her, and seized one of her hands. She sat still, and made no effort to draw it away from him.
"I had never meant to say what I am going to say just now," he declared. "I had meant to wait until there was something successfully accomplished to my credit. I am, you see, a thriftless, wandering adventurer--one who has taken things as they came, and never has been serious. When I have shown that I can also be something else, I shall ask you formally if you will marry me. Until then the thing is, of course, out of the question."
He broke off for a moment, and held her silent by a gesture until he went on again. "I have been swept away, and even if you were willing to make it, I would take no promise from you. Until I have won the right to come back you must be absolutely free. Now you know this, it would be very much wiser if I went away as soon as possible."
"Ah," the girl answered with a thrill in her voice, "whenever you come back you will find me ready to listen to you."
Nasmyth let her hand go. "Now," he asserted, "I think I cannot fail. Still, it must be remembered that you are absolutely free."
He would have said something more, but there was just then a laugh and a patter of feet on the path above, and, looking up, he saw two of Mrs. Acton's guests descending the bluff.