"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night—I was beaten down, desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and—yes, and in your courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road."
"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her frank, almost boyish way.
"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I was hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my fault, you understand—I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to begin again low down—at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon the handle, stood waiting for her to speak.
"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she asked.
"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered.
"And you are making a new foundation now?"
"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't they?" he added cheerfully.
"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I think, to see New York."
"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?"
"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school once in Georgia."