"Do you know what _I_ remember?" he repeated, pulling her hands away and
holding them fast. "A girl with hands, face, hair, form, dress, manners
damned to coarseness by a cruel environment? That? No! No! To-day as
I look back I remember only two blue eyes, deep, deep as wells, soft,
blue, and wonderfully kind. And I remember all through those days--and
hard days they were to a green young fool fresh from the Old Country
trying to keep pace with your farm-bred demon-worker Perkins--I remember
all through those days a girl that never was too tired with her own
unending toil to think of others, and especially to help out with many
a kindness a home-sick, hand-sore, foot-sore stranger who hardly knew a
buck-saw from a turnip hoe, and was equally strange to the uses of both,
a girl that feared no shame nor harm in showing her kindness. That's
what I remember. A girl that made life bearable to a young fool, too
proud to recognize his own limitations, too blind to see the gifts the
gods were flinging at him. Oh, what a fool I was with my silly pride of
family, of superior education and breeding, and with no eye for the
pure gold of as true and loyal a soul as ever offered itself in daily
unmurmuring sacrifice for others, and without a thought of sacrifice.
Fool and dolt! A self-sufficient prig! That's what I remember."

The girl tore her hands away from him.

"Ah, Allan, my boy," she cried with a shrill and scornful laugh that
broke at the end, "how foolishly you talk! And yet I love to hear
you talk so. I love to hear you. But, oh, let me tell you what else I
remember of those days!"

"No, no, I will not listen. It's all nonsense."

"Nonsense! Ah, Allan! Let me tell you this once." She put her hands upon