istrustful. Thank God, you will never grow completely
out of that, as so many women do. Your modesty will always remain a
crown of glory to your character. But as you grow older, retaining your
instinctive impulse to do well every duty that may lie before you, you
will acquire enough of self-confidence to equip you for all emergencies.
You are very young yet--even younger in feeling than in years. You will
grow with every year into a more perfect womanhood."

An occasional tear was by this time trickling down the girl's cheeks.
How could it be otherwise when the man she loved and honored above all
others was so tenderly saying such things of her, and to her, with a
sincerity too greatly passionate to be open to any doubt? How could it
be otherwise when she knew that she must put aside the love of this man,
her hero--the only love, as she knew in her inmost soul, that she could
ever think of with rejoicing so long as she should live?

She would have interrupted the passionate pleading if her voice had been
under control. As it was she sat silent, while he went on.

"I have spoken of my ambitions first, and of your capacity to help
them, not because such things are first in my estimation, but because
you have treated them as worthy of being put first. There are much
higher things to be thought of. What a man _achieves_ is of far less
consequence than what a man _is_. That which I ask of you is to help me
_be_ the best that I am capable of being, and for you to _be_ it with
me. I want to make the most, the best, the happiest life for you that is
possible. If I am permitted to do that, with you to help me do it, it
will be an achievement of far greater benefit to the world than any
possible external success can be. The home is immeasurably more
important, as a factor in human life, and in national life, than the
mart, or the senate, or the pulpit, or any other influence can be. It is
in happy homes that the saving virtues of humanity are born and
nourished. From such homes, more than from all the pulpits, and all the
institutions of learning, there flows an influence for good that
sweetens all life, preserves morality, and keeps us human beings fit to
live. Oh, Barbara, you will never know how longingly I dream of such a
home with you at its head! You cannot know how absolutely the worthiness
of my life depends upon such a linking of it with yours."

The girl had completely given way to her emotions now, but with that
re