I stared again. "He has been dead for eight years. What do you, an
Englishman, know of him?"

He gave a wave of the hand. "It was my question," he reminded. "I
asked if you knew him."

I could not but be amused. How he liked to play at mystery! I would
copy his brevity. "Yes," I replied.

He looked up with much interest. "So you knew him. Tell me, monsieur,
was he mountebank and freebooter, or a gallant gentleman much maligned?"

I removed my hat. "He was neither. He was an ambition incarnate; an
ambition so vast there were few to understand it, for it had no
personal side. You said the other night that but few motives rule men.
La Salle has been misunderstood because the usual motives--greed, the
love of woman, and the desire for fame--did not touch him. He was the
slave of one great idea, and so he was lonely and men feared him." I
finished with some defiance. I knew that the blood had risen in my
cheeks as I spoke, for some subjects touch me as if I were a woman.
The Englishman was watching me, and I disliked to have him see what I
felt was weakness. But he did not scoff. His own cheeks flushed
somewhat, and he looked off at the water.

"La Salle had more than a great idea," he said meditatively. "He had
great opportunity. He desired to found an empire in the west, did he
not, monsieur? Well, he failed, but, perhaps, that was accident. He
might have succeeded. It is not often in the history of the world that
such an opportunity comes to any person, man or woman. La Salle, at
least, tried to live up to his full stature. Monsieur, how pitiable it