She remembered--it was not exactly pleasant, somehow, to remember it
to-night--just the look of his face when they came into the house that
summer evening, and he for the first time saw what she was, her cape
having fallen off, in the full lamplight. His kindly blue eyes widened
with shocked surprise, and fell; when he raised them, a pity like a
mother's had crept into them; it broadened and brightened as time slid
by, but it never left them.

So you see, after that, life unfolded in a burst of little surprises for
Asenath. If she came home very tired, some one said, "I am sorry." If
she wore a pink ribbon, she heard a whisper, "It suits you." If she
sang a little song, she knew that somebody listened.

"I did not know the world was like this!" cried the girl.

After a time there came a night that he chanced to be out late,--they
had planned an arithmetic lesson together, which he had forgotten,--and
she sat grieving by the kitchen fire.

"You missed me so much then?" he said regretfully, standing with his
hand upon her chair. She was trying to shell some corn; she dropped the
pan, and the yellow kernels rolled away on the floor.

"What should I have if I didn't have you?" she said, and caught her
breath.

The young man paced to the window and back again. The firelight touched
her shoulders, and the sad, white scar.