ean?--I don't understand," faltered
Betty, vaguely troubled by his mood.

"Mean? Why, it means that I've been ruined, and it's too late to mend me.
I'm no better than a pampered poodle dog. It means that I've gotten
everything I wanted, until I begin to fancy there's nothing under heaven I
can't get." Then, in one of his quick changes of temper, his face cleared
with a burst of honest laughter.

She grew merry instantly, and as she smiled up at him, he saw her eyes like
rays of hazel light between her lashes. "Has the black crow gone?" she
asked. "Do you know when I have a gray day Mammy calls it the black crow
flying by. As long as his shadow is over you, there's always a gloom at the
brain, she says. Has he quite gone by?"

"Oh, he flew by quickly," he answered, laughing, "he didn't even stay to
flap his wings." Then he became suddenly grave. "I wonder what kind of a
man you'll fall in love with, Betty?" he said abruptly.

She drew back startled, and her eyes reminded him of those of a frightened
wild thing he had come upon in the spring woods one day. As she shrank from
him in her dim blue dress, her hair fell from its coil and lay like a gold
bar across her bosom, which fluttered softly with her quickened breath.

"I? Why, how can I tell?" she asked.

"He'll not be black and ugly, I dare say?"

She shook her head, regaining her composure.

"Oh, no, fair and beautiful," she answered.

"Ah, as unlike me as day from night?"

"As day from night," she echoed, and went on after a moment, her girlish
visions shining in her eyes:--

"He will be a man, at least," she said slowly, "a man with a faith to fight
for--to live for--to make him noble. He may be a beggar by the roadside,
but he will be a beggar with dreams. He will be forever travelling to some
great end--some clear purpose." The last words came so faintly that he bent
nearer to hear. A deep flush swept to her forehead, and she turned from him
to the fire. These were things that she had hidden even from Virginia.

But as he looked steadily down upon her, something of her own pure fervour
was in his face. Her vivid beauty rose like a flame to his eyes, and for a
single instant it seemed to him that he had never looked upon a woman until
to-day.

"So you would sit with him in the dust of the roadside?" he asked, smiling.

"But the dust is beautiful when the sun shines on it," answered the girl;
"and on wet days we should go into the pine woods, and on f