By mere despair of attainment ?--or by the scruple of an honourable self-control?
Could she--_could_ she marry a Canadian?
There was the central question, out at last!--irrevocable!--writ large on the mountains and the forests, as she sped through them.

Could she, possessed by inheritance of all that is most desirable and delightful in English society, linked with its great interests and its dominant class, and through them with the rich cosmopolitan life of cultivated Europe--could she tear herself from that old soil, and that dear familiar environment?
Had the plant vitality enough to bear transplanting?
She did not put her question in these terms; but that was what her sudden tumult and distress of mind really meant.
Looking up, she saw Delaine beside her.

Well, there was Europe, and at her feet! For the last month she had been occupied in scorning it.
English country-house life, artistic society and pursuits, London in the season, Paris and Rome in the spring, English social and political influence--there they were beside her.

She had only to stretch out her hand.
A chill, uncomfortable laughter seemed to fill the inner mind through which the debate passed, while all the time she was apparently looking at the landscape, and chatting with her brother or Delaine.

She fell into an angry contempt for that mood of imaginative delight in which she had journeyed through Canada so far.