suddenly an intense pity
sprang into life in the girl's heart. She felt as if she were
looking at some poor little child, instead of a stalwart young man.

"Don't look so, Granville," she said, softly.

"Of course I am glad at any good fortune which can come to you,
Ellen," Granville said then, huskily. His lips quivered a little,
but his eyes on her face were brave and faithful. Suddenly Ellen
seemed to see in this young man a counterpart of her own father.
Granville had a fine, high forehead and contemplative outlook. He
had been a good scholar. Many said that it was a pity he had to
leave school and go to work. It had been the same with her father.
Andrew had always looked immeasurably above his labor. She seemed to
see Granville Joy in the future just such a man, a finer animal
harnessed to the task of a lower, and harnessed in part by his own
loving faithfulness towards others. Ellen had often reflected that,
if it hadn't been for her and her mother, her father would not have
been obliged to work so hard. Now in Granville she saw another man
whom love would hold to the ploughshare. A great impulse of loyalty
as towards her own came over her.

"It won't make any difference between me and my old friends if I do
go to Vassar College," she said, without reflecting on the dangerous
encouragement of it.

"You can't get into another track of life without its making a
difference," returned Granville, soberly. "But I am glad. God knows
I'm glad, Ellen. I dare say it is better for you than if--" He
stopped then and seemed all at once to see projected on his mirror
of the future this dainty, exquisite girl, with her fine intellect,
dragging about a poor house, with wailing children in arm and at
heel, and suddenly a great courage of renunciation came over him.

"It _is_ better, Ellen," he said, in a loud voice, like a hero's, as
if he were cheering his own better impulses on to victory over his
own passions. "It is better for a girl like you, than to--"

Ellen knew that he meant to say, "to marry a fellow like me." Ellen
looked at him, the sturdy backward fling of his head and shoulders,
and the honest regard of his pained yet unflinching eyes, and a
great weakness of natural longing for that which she was even now
deprecating nearly overswept her. She was nearer loving him that
moment than ever before. She realized something in him which could
command love--the renunciation of love for love's sake.

"I shall never