appreciate"--

"I wonder you did not go to them;" with a fine irony, cutting short his
sentence.

"Because I liked you, chose you."

"I do not so desire to be chosen," she answered quickly. "The man I
marry must win my respect, my highest faith; must have an aim, an
ambition, and not dawdle through life as some silly woman might."

The decisive voice seemed to cut a path between him and her as it went.
It struck home uncomfortably.

"Then I suppose you call all men not engaged in manual labor,
dawdlers,--scholars, poets, men of leisure, who can devote their lives
to work that requires patience and fineness of detail, rather than the
heavy swing of a blacksmith's hammer. When a man has no need of
work"--and Fred paused, a trifle out of temper.

"I do not believe God ever made an idler," she said, with high gravity
that widened the gulf between them. "To whom much is given, much will be
required."

How unreasonable she was! He hated women who flung texts or proverbs at
you; and yet he did not hate her. She had a girl's flighty notions, born
of crude contact with inferior minds, and perhaps over-much
novel-reading.

"I do not exactly understand what a man must do to win your love," he
said in one of those calm, intensely irritating tones. "I have chosen
what suited me best,--culture, refinement, and the education that fits
me for the sphere in which I am likely to move all my days,"
impressively. "It is true, much of the wisdom of the world is little to
my taste. I do not know why a man should wade through a slough of evil
for the sake of repenting afterward, for looking white in contrast to
that foul blackness. The ninety and nine just ones seem to me the better
example."

"I am afraid I shall not be able to make you understand," she went on,
with a little hesitation. "Perhaps I have not the power or patience to
shape a man's soul to a noble purpose or ambition. I want him strong
and earnest, full of energy and that high sense of duty to all around
him, not satisfied to drift down the stream in frivolous content, but to
make the way better for his having gone over it. I want him true as
steel to his friends, generous, yet uncompromising to his foes, to all
evil; the kind of man who, if crushed down by fate to-day, could see
some ray above his head to-morrow, who has sufficient moral fibre not to
be rigidly bound by class feelings and narrow prejudices."

Sylvie paused, startled at herself. She had never fram