he had seen her last. "A
young girl who doesn't even know that she is pretty."

Silla pouted; her whole expression was one of supercilious disavowal.

"If they offer her a cake, or a handkerchief, or a little fun, she
stretches out her neck and runs up. I should think you might understand
that, Silla, from all you see round you! How many of them, I should like
to know, will ever come to be the wife of an honest working-man? They
manage to dance a few times, and then it's all over. And they wanted to
be just as kind to you now, Silla! That Veyergang is on the watch for
you! If I'm not on the watch for him----" He suddenly looked pale and
ugly.

"What are you thinking of, Nikolai? Don't go on like that!"

"You may well say what was I thinking of, to stand there grinding
and filing away the whole month at my probation work, and then let you
go up there among that pack of wolves. But I was born like that--that
everything should go wrong with me!"

Silla stood, as she always did when Nikolai put on this tone, downcast
and dispirited, her slender figure bending forwards, and her eyes on the
ground.

"We two, Silla," he continued at length, with a shake as if of
resolution, but his voice trembled--"we two have been, as it were,
brought up together. And with things as they were, if they could make me
go wrong, it would have been still easier for you to be twisted by them,
for I was strong, you see; but you were weak, and had always to creep
like a cat among lies and difficulties. And so--so--I thought that we
two--who have always stood by one another--and I haven't had anyone else
I could trust, as you know, Silla, and neither have you--that we should
join hands. And if you're of the same mind, then----"

He had clasped his broad hands round the gate-post, and was squeezing it
with all the strength of his square-set figure, while he waited for her
answer. He gazed at her bent head, but she did not look up; and he drew
a deep breath, for he felt that he must go on.

"And now I've got together a little money, and not bought anything, and
have filed and filed away at my probation work; because when I become
journeyman, and another year has passed, and I've laid by a little,
then--then it might be that you could get away from the factory dirt and
the ordering at home both at once, and be a real smith's wife, Silla.
You've never had any one to take care of you as I've done, you know; and
you don't know how good I'll be to