“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, meaningless, musical, maddening.  And Mrs. Schoville sitting there, nursing an expression of idiotic ecstasy, and understanding no more than I. I could have strangled her.

“Why, I have stolen away, at night, with your Browning, and locked myself in like a thief in fear.  The text was senseless, I have beaten my head with my fist like a wild man, to try and knock some comprehension into it.  For my life had worked itself out along one set groove, deep and narrow.  I was in the rut.  I had done those things which came to my hand and done them well; but the time was past; I could not turn my hand anew.  I, who am strong and dominant, who have played large with destiny, who could buy body and soul a thousand painters and versifiers, was baffled by a few paltry cents’ worth of printed paper!”

He spilled her hair for a moment’s silence.

“To come back.  I had attempted the impossible, gambled against the inevitable.  I had sent you from me to get that which I had not, dreaming that we would still be one.  As though two could be added to two and still remain two.  So, to sum up, the breed still holds, but you have learned an alien tongue.  When you speak it I am deaf.  And bitterest of all, I know that the new tongue is the greater.  I do not know why I have said all this, made my confession of weakness—­”

“Oh, father mine, greatest of men!” She raised her head and laughed into his eyes, the while brushing back the thick iron-gray hair which thatched the dome of his forehead.  “You, who have wrestled more mightily, done greater things than these painters and versifiers.  You who know so well the law of change.  Might not the same plaint fall from your father’s lips were he to sit now beside you and look upon your work and you?”