smiling lips, that made her afraid,--deep differences of race. The Prices
were American in an old-fashioned, clean, plain sense. So when he
persisted, she made her mother engage passage for home and fled with the
feeling that she must put an ocean between herself and this man, fled to
the arms of the man she was to marry, who somehow in the midst of his busy
life managed to meet her in New York.

But why him? Out of all these avenues, her possibilities of various fate,
why had she chosen him, the least promising outwardly? Was it done in a
mood of reaction against the other men who had sought her? He was most
unlike them all, with a background of hard struggle, with limitations
instead of privileges such as they had. The Colonel's daughter could
understand John Lane's persistent force,--patient, quiet, sure. She
remembered his shy, inexperienced face when her father first brought him to
the house for dinner. She had thought little of him then,--the Colonel was
always bringing home some rough diamond,--but he had silently absorbed her
as he did everything in his path, and selected her, so to speak, as he
selected whatever he wanted. And after that whenever she came back to her
father's home from her little expeditions into the world, he was always
there, and she came to know that he wanted her,--was waiting until his
moment should come. It came.

Never since then had she had a regret for those possibilities that had been
hers,--for those other men standing at the other avenues and inviting her.
From the moment that his arms had held her, she knew that he was the
best,--so much stronger, finer, simpler than any other. She was proud that
she had been able to divine this quality and could prefer real things to
sham. During the engagement months she had learned, bit by bit, the story
of his struggle, what had been denied to him of comfort and advantage, what
he had done for himself and for his mother. She yearned to give him what he