of
the room and watched her roll up the socks she had just darned. How neat
and deft she was. After all, there _was_ something in being a lady, as
Mrs. Sharp had said. Neither she nor Gertie, both capable women, could
do things in quite the same way that Nora did.

Oh, why had she come into his life at all! She had given him the taste
for knowledge, for better things of all sorts; and now she was going
away, going away forever. He had no illusions about her ever returning.
Not she, once she had escaped from a life she hated. Had she not just
said as much when she said that the shack had seemed like a prison to
her?

And now, in place of going on in the old way that had always seemed good
enough to him before he knew anything better, mulling about, getting his
own meals, with only one thought, one ambition in the world--the success
of his crops and the acquisition of more land that he might some day in
the dim future have a few thousands laid by--he would always be wanting
something he could never get without her: more knowledge of the things
that made life fuller and wider and broader, the things that she prized
and had known from her childhood.

It was cruel and unfair of her to have awakened the desire in him only
to abandon him. To have held the cup of knowledge to his lips for one
brief instant and then leave him to go through life with his thirst
unslaked! Not that she was intentionally cruel. No, he thought he knew
all of her little faults of temper and of pride by this. Her heart was
too kindly to let her wound him knowingly, witness her tenderness to
poor Mrs. Sharp only this afternoon. But it hurt, none the less. She had
said that she had not known he wanted love. How should she have guessed
it?

But the real thing that tortured him most was the fact that he wanted
her, her, her. She had been his, his woman. No other woman in this broad
earth could take her place.

A little sound like a groan escaped him.

"You'll think of me sometimes, my girl, won't you?" he said huskily.

"I don't suppose I shall be able to help it." She smiled at him over her
shoulder, as she crossed the room to restore her basket to its place.

"I was an ignorant, uneducated man. I didn't know how to treat you
properly. I wanted to make you happy, but I didn't seem to know just how
to do it."

"You've never been unkind to me, Frank. You've been very patient with
me!"

"I guess you'll be happier away from me, though. And I'll b