her father's path, and the wind came
in warm, soft gusts, sweeping over the miles of splendor from the sea,
David drew her to him, determined to win from her a full expression.

"What is it, Cassandra? Open your heart. Don't shut anything away from
me. What have you been dreaming lately?"

"You have never said a word of fault with me yet, David--for what I did,
going away off there and not waiting quietly until you could come back,
as you wrote me to do."

"That was the bravest, finest thing you ever did--but one." He was
thinking of her renunciation.

"You are so good to forgive me, David. In one way it was better that I
went, because it made me understand as I never could have done
otherwise. You would never have told me, but now I know."

"Unfold a little of this wisdom, so I may judge of its value."

"Can you, David? I'm afraid not. You have a way of bewildering me, so I
can't see the rights and wrongs of things myself. But there! It is just
part of the difference. Why, even the nursemaids over there, and Hetty
Giles, the landlady's daughter, are wiser than I. I came to see it every
instant, the difference between you and me--between our two worlds.
David, how did you ever dare marry me?"

He only laughed happily and kissed her. "Tell it all," he said tenderly.

"I felt it first when I went to the town house. It was hard to find the
address. I only had Mr. Stretton's." David set his teeth grimly in anger
at himself at giving her only his lawyer's address, in stupid fear lest
her letters betray him to his mother and sister.

"Now, do not hide one thing from me--not one," he said sternly, and she
continued, with a conscientious fear of disobedience, to open her heart.

"I saw by the look in the old man's eyes that I had not done the right
thing, coming in that way with a baby in my arms, like a beggar. I saw
he was very curious, and I was that proud I didn't know what to tell him
I had come for, when I found you were not there, so when he said artists
often came to see the gallery, I said I had come to see the gallery; and
David, I didn't even know what a gallery was. I thought it was a high
piazza around a house, and I found it was a great room full of pictures.
I was that ignorant.

"I felt like I was some wild creature that had got lost in that splendid
palace and didn't know where to run to get away; and they all fixed
their eyes on me as if they were saying: 'How does she dare come here?
She isn't one