She'd marry me to-morrow if I could add myself, such as I am,--she doesn't
overrate me,--to what she has already; but an exchange she wasn't prepared
for. In all my life I never was so clearly estimated, body and soul. I
don't blame her, you understand. When I left her, three years ago, I saw my
way easily enough to a reputation, and an income, and a home in the East;
she never thought of anything else; I never taught her to look for anything
else. I dare say she rather enjoyed having a lover working for her in the
unknown West; she enjoyed the pretty letters she wrote me; but when it came
to the bare bones of existence in a mining camp, with a husband not very
rich or very distinguished, she had nothing to clothe them with. You said
once that to be happy here a woman must not have too much imagination; she
hadn't quite enough. I had to be dead honest with her when I asked her to
come. I told her there was nothing here but the mountains and the sunsets,
and a few items of picturesqueness which count with some people. Of course
I had to tell her I was but little better off than when I left. A man's
experience is something he cannot set forth at its value to himself; she
passed it over as a word of no practical meaning. There her imagination
failed her again. She took me frankly at my own estimate; and in justice to
her I must say I put myself at the lowest figures. I made a very poor show
on paper."

"You wrote to her!" exclaimed Miss Frances. "You did not go on? Oh, you
have made a great mistake! Do go: it cannot be too late. Letters are the
most untrusty things!"

"Wait," he said. "There is something else. She has a head for business;
she proposed that I should come East, and accept a superintendentship from
a cousin of hers, the owner of a gun-factory in one of those shady New
England towns women are so fond of. She intimated that he was in politics,
this cousin, and of course would expect his employees to become part of