"Why not?" He laughed with a touch of bitterness, and held out his hand, fresh from the soil, hardened by the plough. It was a powerful hand, brown and sinewy, with distorted knuckles and broken nails. "Oh, not that," he said. "I don't mean that. That shows work, but I know you—Genia—you will tell me work is manly. So it is, but is ignorance and poverty and—and all the rest—"
She leaned over and touched his hand lightly with her own. "All the rest is courage and patience and pride," she said; "as for the hand, it is a good hand, and I like it."
He shook his head.
"Good enough in its place, I grant you," he answered; "good enough in the fields, at the plough; or in the barnyard—good enough even to keep this poor farm from collapse and to lift a few of its burdens—but not good enough to—"
He raised her hand lightly, regarding it with half-humorous eyes.
"How strong it is to be so light!" he added.
"Strong enough to hold fast to its friends," returned Eugenia gravely.
He let it fall and looked into her face.
"May its friends be worthy ones," he said.
She rode slowly through the wood, and he walked with his hand on her bridle. The bright branches struck them as they passed, and sometimes he stopped to hold them aside for her. His eyes followed her as she rode serenely above him, and he thought, in his folly, of the lady in the old romance who was, to the desire of her lovers, as "a distant flame, a sword afar off."