"Oh! Something about Bob?" he asked casually.
Her look was steady, her voice humble: "Yes."
Her humility touched him profoundly. Knowing how unshakable were her resolutions, he made a desperate attempt to divert her mind: "That is settled, Miss Grace, and it's too late now to alter the decision, for the school-board has already voted us a new superintendent—he has been sent his notification. Abbott Ashton is out of it, and it's all his fault Bob was the only one to stand up for him, but he wasn't strong enough to hold his friend above the wave of popular opinion. Don't ask me to interview Bob for Abbott Ashton."
Grace calmly waited for this futility to pass; then with an air suggesting, "Now, shall we talk sensibly?" she resumed: "I approve the action of the school-board. It did well in dismissing Professor Ashton. May I speak about Mr. Clinton? He urges me to marry him at once."
"Nonsense!" he exclaimed.
"It is not nonsense," Grace calmly responded. "He thinks I could make him a better man. We would work among the very poor in the Chicago settlements; maybe in one of your own missions, I often wonder if I couldn't do more good by personal contact with evil, than I can here, with a person like Fran always clogging my efforts."
He started up. "Grace! You go away?—And—and leave me and my work?"
"Let Fran fill my position. You think she's the daughter of your boyhood friend—it would give her position and independence."
"No one can ever fill your place," Gregory exclaimed, with violence. His cheeks burned, lambent flames gleamed in his brown eyes. The effect was startlingly beautiful. At such exalted moments, thinking no evil because ceasing to think, grown all feeling, and it but an infinite longing, the glow of passion refined his face, always delicately sensitive. The vision of Grace, in giving herself to another, like a devouring fire consumed those temporary supports that held him above the shifting sands of his inner nature.
"Grace! But Grace! You wouldn't marry him!"