strong, green with sap and fresh and vigorous?
Or would it droop limp and lifeless, withered by the heats of the world
other than the little simple, natural Dyea world?

"It was the day of days, and yet it was a lingering, watching, waiting
tragedy. You know I had lived the years lonely, fought the lone fight,
and you, away, the only kin. If it had failed . . . But your boat
shot from the bluffs into the open, and I was half-afraid to look. Men
have never called me coward, but I was nearer the coward then than ever
and all before. Ay, that moment I had faced death easier. And it was
foolish, absurd. How could I know whether it was for good or ill when
you drifted a distant speck on the river? Still, I looked, and the
miracle began, for I did know. You stood at the steering-sweep. You
were a Welse. It seems so little; in truth it meant so much. It was
not to be expected of a mere woman, but of a Welse, yes. And when
Bishop went over the side, and you gripped the situation as
imperatively as the sweep, and your voice rang out, and the Siwashes
bent their backs to your will,--then was it the day of days."

"I tried always, and remembered," Frona whispered. She crept up softly
till her arm was about his neck and her head against his breast. He
rested one arm lightly on her body, and poured her bright hair again
and again from his hand in glistening waves.

"As I said, the stamp of the breed was unmarred, but there was yet a
difference. There is a difference. I have watched it, studied it,
tried to make it out. I have sat at table, proud by the side of you,
but dwarfed. When you talked of little things I was large enough to
follow; when of big things, too small. I knew you, had my hand on you,
when _presto_! and you were away, gone--I was lost. He is a fool who
knows not his own ignorance; I was wise enough to know mine. Art,
poetry, music,--what do I know of them? And they were the great
things, are the great things to you, mean more to you than the little
things I may comprehend. And I had hoped, blindly, foolishly, that we
might be one in the spirit as well as the one flesh. It has been
bitter, but I have faced it, and understand. But to see my own red
blood get away from me, elude me, rise above me! It stuns. God! I
have heard you read from your Browning--no, no; do not speak--and
watched the play of your face, the uplift and the passion of it, and
all the while the words droning in upon me