"You have been rather unkind to me this last week," the girl began, with her eyes fixed steadily on his. "And that day at the mines when I counted on you so, you acted abominably."
Clay's face showed so plainly his surprise at this charge, which he thought he only had the right to make, that Miss Langham stopped.
"I don't understand," said Clay, quietly. "How did I treat you abominably?"
He had taken her so seriously that Miss Langham dropped her lighter tone and spoke in one more kindly:
"I went out there to see your work at its best. I was only interested in going because it was your work, and because it was you who had done it all, and I expected that you would try to explain it to me and help me to understand, but you didn't. You treated me as though I had no interest in the matter at all, as though I was not capable of understanding it. You did not seem to care whether I was interested or not. In fact, you forgot me altogether."
Clay exhibited no evidence of a reproving conscience. "I am sorry you had a stupid time," he said, gravely.
"I did not mean that, and you know I didn't mean that," the girl answered. "I wanted to hear about it from you, because you did it. I wasn't interested so much in what had been done, as I was in the man who had accomplished it."
Clay shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and looked across at Miss Langham with a troubled smile.
"But that's just what I don't want," he said. "Can't you see? These mines and other mines like them are all I have in the world. They are my only excuse for having lived in it so long. I want to feel that I've done something outside of myself, and when you say that you like me personally, it's as little satisfaction to me as it must be to a woman to be congratulated on her beauty, or on her fine voice. That is nothing she has done herself. I should like you to value what I have done, not what I happen to be."
Miss Langham turned her eyes to the harbor, and it was some short time before she answered.