"That makes living a different thing from the way most people take it," he said, at last, and his tone showed that he was considering it deeply.
"Does it?" she said, softly, and looked with him toward the sunset, still half seeing his quiet profile against the light. At last it came to her that she must speak. Half fearfully she began: "I've been thinking about what you said on the ride. You said you didn't make good. I--wish you would. I--I'm sure you could--"
She looked up wistfully and saw the gentleness come into his face as if the fountain of his soul, long sealed, had broken up, and as if he saw a possibility before him for the first time through the words she had spoken.
At last he turned to her with that wondering smile again. "Why should you care?" he asked. The words would have sounded harsh if his tone had not been so gentle.
Margaret hesitated for an answer. "I don't know how to tell it," she said, slowly. "There's another verse, a few lines more in that poem, perhaps you know them?-'All I never could be, All, men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.'
I want it because--well, perhaps because I feel you are worth all that to God. I would like to see you be that."
He looked down at her again, and was still so long that she felt she had failed miserably.
"I hope you will excuse my speaking," she added. "I--It seems there are so many grand possibilities in life, and for you--I couldn't bear to have you say you hadn't made good, as if it were all over."
"I'm glad you spoke," he said, quickly. "I guess perhaps I have been all kinds of a fool. You have made me feel how many kinds I have been."
"Oh no!" she protested.
"You don't know what I have been," he said, sadly, and then with sudden conviction, as if he read her thoughts: "You do know! That prig of a parson has told you! Well, it's just as well you should know. It's right!"
A wave of misery passed over his face and erased all its brightness and hope. Even the gentleness was gone. He looked haggard and drawn with hopelessness all in a moment.
"Do you think it would matter to me--anything that man would say?" she protested, all her woman's heart going out in pity.