all one's
nature shrank from the monotony of brutal labor. The paydays came
around, and opportunities were made for us to forget what we had borne,
and had still to bear. Then you laid a restraining hand on me. I could
not take your picture where you could not go. Is all that to count for
nothing?"

He held out his arms to her. "As to the other question, can you get
beyond the narrow point of view? We're in a big, new country where the
old barriers are down. We're merely flesh and blood--red blood--and we
speak as we feel. Admitting that I was sorry for you--I am--how does
that tell against me--or you? There's one thing only that counts at
all--I want you."

Agatha was stirred with an emotion that made her heart beat wildly. He
had spoken with a force and passion that had nearly swept her away with
it. The vigor of the new land throbbed in his voice, and, flinging aside
all cramping restraints and conventions, he had claimed her as primitive
man claimed primitive woman. Her whole being responded to his love and
Gregory faded out of her mind; but there was, after all, pride in her,
and she could not quite bring herself to look at life from his point of
view. All her prejudices and her traditions were opposed to it. He had
made a mistake when he had admitted that he was sorry for her. She did
not want his compassion, and she shrank from the thought that she would
marry him--for shelter. It brought to her a sudden, shameful confusion
as she remembered the haste with which marriages were arranged on the
prairie. Then, as the first unreasoning impulse which had almost
compelled her to yield to him passed away, she reflected that it was
scarcely two months since she had met him in England. It was intolerable
that he should think that she would be willing to fall into his arms
merely because he had held them out to her.

"It is a little difficult to get beyond one's sense of what is fit," she
said. "You--I must say again--can't know anything about me. You have
woven fancies about that photograph, but you must recognize that I'm not
the girl you have created out of your reveries. In all probability she
is wholly unreal, unnatural, visionary." Agatha contrived to smile, for
she was recovering her composure. "Perhaps it is easy when one has
imagination to endow a person with qualities and graces that could never
belong to them. It must be easy"--though she was unconscious of it,
there was a trace of bitterness in her voice--"