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“Why, Margie,” he said seriously, “you know that’s not true! You know you’re not dull. Your manners and your taste and your style are as good as those of anybody. Who has hinted that they aren’t? What has come over you? Who has been saying anything to you? Have I done anything? If so, I’m sorry!” He had a guilty consciousness of misrepresenting himself and his point of view even while saying this, but kindness, generosity, affection, her legal right to his affection, as he now thought demanded it.

“No! No!” she exclaimed brokenly and without ceasing her tears.”It isn’t you. It isn’t anybody. It’s me — just me! That’s what’s the matter with me. I’m dull; I’m not stylish; I’m not attractive. I don’t know anything about music or books or people or anything. I sit and listen. but I don’t know what to say. People talk to you — they hang on your words — but they haven’t anything to say to me. They can’t talk to me, and I can’t talk to them. It’s because I don’t know anything — because I haven’t anything to say! Oh dear! Oh dear!” and she beat her thin, artistic little hands on the shoulders of his coat.

Duer could not endure this storm without an upwelling of pity for her. He cuddled her close in his arms, extremely sad that she should be compelled to suffer so. What should he do? What could he do? He could see how it was. She was hurt; she was neglected. He neglected her when among others. These smart women whom he knew and liked to talk with neglected her. They couldn’t see in her what he could. Wasn’t life pathetic? They didn’t know how sweet she was, how faithful, how glad she was to work for him. That really didn’t make any difference in the art world, he knew, but still it almost seemed as if it ought to. There one must be clever, he knew that — everybody knew it. And Marjorie was not clever — at least, not in their way. She couldn’t play or sing or paint or talk brilliantly, as they could. She did not really know what the world of music, art, and literature was doing. She was only good, faithful, excellent as a housewife, a fine mender of clothes, a careful buyer, saving, considerate, dependable, but —

As he thought of this and then of this upwelling depth of emotion of hers, a thing quite moving to him always, he realized, or thought he did, that no woman hat he had ever known had anything quite like this. He had known many women intimately. He had associated with Charlotte and Mildred and Neva Badger and Volida Blackstone, and quite a number of interesting attractive young women whom he had met here and there since, but outside of the stage — that art of Sarah Bernhardt and Clara Morris and some of the more talented English actresses of these later days — he persuaded himself that he had never seen any one quite like Marjorie. This powerful upwelling of emotion which she was now exhibiting and which was so distinctive of her, was not to be found elsewhere, he thought. He had felt it keenly the first days he had visited her at her father’s home in Avondale. Oh, those days with her in Avondale! How wonderful they were! Those delicious nights! Flowers, moonlight, odors, came back — the green fields, the open sky. Yes; she was powerful emotionally. She was compounded of many and all of these things.

It was true she knew nothing of art, nothing of music — the great, new music — nothing of books in the eclectic sense, but she had real, sweet, deep, sad, stirring emotion, the most appealing thing he knew. It might not be as great as that exhibited by some of the masters of the stage, or the great composers — he was not quite sure, so critical is life — but nevertheless it was effective, dramatic, powerful. Where did she get it? No really common soul could have it. Here must be something of the loneliness of the prairies, the sad patience of the rocks and fields, the lonesomeness of the hush of the countryside at night, the aimless, monotonous, pathetic chirping of the crickets. Her father following down a furrow in the twilight behind straining, toil-worn horses; her brothers binding wheat in the July sun; the sadness of furrow scents and field fragrances in the twilight — there was something of all these things in her sobs.