nt need not be
proportioned in the mould; nor a thew be symmetrical to be massive.

And finally,--none the less necessary but still finally,--Vance Corliss
was neither spiritually dead nor decadent. He affected her as fresh
and wholesome and strong, as reared above the soil but not scorning the
soil. Of course, none of this she reasoned out otherwise than by
subconscious processes. Her conclusions were feelings, not thoughts.

Though they quarrelled and disagreed on innumerable things, deep down,
underlying all, there was a permanent unity. She liked him for a
certain stern soberness that was his, and for his saving grace of
humor. Seriousness and banter were not incompatible. She liked him
for his gallantry, made to work with and not for display. She liked
the spirit of his offer at Happy Camp, when he proposed giving her an
Indian guide and passage-money back to the United States. He could
_do_ as well as talk. She liked him for his outlook, for his innate
liberality, which she felt to be there, somehow, no matter that often
he was narrow of expression. She liked him for his mind. Though
somewhat academic, somewhat tainted with latter-day scholasticism, it
was still a mind which permitted him to be classed with the
"Intellectuals." He was capable of divorcing sentiment and emotion
from reason. Granted that he included all the factors, he could not go
wrong. And here was where she found chief fault with him,--his
narrowness which precluded all the factors; his narrowness which gave
the lie to the breadth she knew was really his. But she was aware that
it was not an irremediable defect, and that the new life he was leading
was very apt to rectify it. He was filled with culture; what he needed
was a few more of life's facts.

And she liked him for himself, which is quite different from liking the
parts which went to compose him. For it is no miracle for two things,
added together, to produce not only the sum of themselves, but a third
thing which is not to be found in either of them. So with him. She
liked him for himself, for that something which refused to stand out as
a part, or a sum of parts; for that something which is the corner-stone
of Faith and which has ever baffled Philosophy and Science. And
further, to like, with Frona Welse, did not mean to love.

First, and above all, Vance Corliss was drawn to Frona Welse because of
the clamor within him for a return to the soil. In him the elemen