“I don’t know what more you expected.  I didn’t know you wanted anything more!”

“I guess I wanted love,” he said in a tone so low that she barely caught it.

He stood over by the table, looking down on her from his great height.  His face was flushed, but his eyes were steady and unashamed.

“You!”

She looked at him in absolute consternation.  Her breath came in hurried gasps.  But her heart sang in her breast and the little pathetic droop of her mouth disappeared.  Her telltale eyes dropped on her work.  Not yet, not yet; she was greedy to hear more.

“I know you now less well than when you’d been only a week up to Ed’s.”  He resumed his pacing up and down.  “I guess I’ve lost the trail.  I’m just beating round, floundering in the bush.”

“I never knew you wanted love,” she said softly.

“I guess I didn’t know it until just lately, either.”

“I suppose parting’s always rather painful,” she said with just the beginning of a little smile creeping round the corners of her lips.

“If you go back—­when you go back,” he corrected himself, “to the old country, I guess—­I guess you’ll never want to come back.”

“Perhaps you’ll come over to England yourself, one of these days.  If you only have a couple of good years, you could easily shut up the place and run over for the winter,” she said shyly.

“I guess that would be a dangerous experiment.  You’ll be a lady in England.  I guess I’d still be only the hired man.”

“You’d be my husband.”

“N-o-o-o,” he said, with a shake of the head.  “I guess I wouldn’t chance it.”

She tried another way.  She was sure of her happiness now; she could play with it a little longer.

“You’ll write to me now and then, and tell me how you’re getting on, won’t you?”

“Will you care to know?” he asked quickly.

“Why, yes, of course I shall.”

“Well,” he said, throwing back his head proudly, “I’ll write and tell you if I’m making good.  If I ain’t, I guess I shan’t feel much like writing.”

“But you will make good, Frank.  I know you well enough for that.”

“Do you?” His tone was grateful.

“I have learned to—­to respect you during these months we’ve lived together.  You have taught me a great deal.  All sorts of qualities which I used to think of great value seem unimportant to me now.  I have changed my ideas about many things.”

“We have each learned something, I guess,” he said generously.

Nora gave him a grateful glance.  He stood for a moment at the far end 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?