"If it hadn't been for you," said Gwen softly, "I might never have come to my own. I think you scared me, dear Daddy Lu, into giving up any thought of marrying for money."
"I'm glad of that, very glad," he answered smiling. "I've done something then to be thankful for."
"I'm the one to be thankful. To think of my losing the 'boy' through any such hallucination as the idea that I could be happy with anyone else. I realize that more and more every day in proportion as I know him better and he grows dearer to me. You've saved me, Daddy Lu. You've saved my life."
He laid his hand gently on hers. "That's a big thing to say, but I think maybe you're right. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose—"
"His own soul," Gwen finished the text. "It amounts to that when one forfeits his best self to a craving for luxury and ease. Aunt Cam says our best development always comes through sacrifice of some kind."
"She's right."
"So you have helped me to my best development, by showing me how the life can be more than meat and the body than raiment. I was thinking more of the meat and the raiment, I am afraid. Dear me, what a serious talk we are having, full of texts and such things. I feel as if I were actually preparing for the missionary field. However I am glad to have had the talk, and shall think of it many times when I am far away."
"That's a time I don't like to think about."
"Then you'd better come, too."
He shook his head. "I'm like a barnacle, glued to the rock by my own inner forces. I couldn't leave now."