"You can become anything you will, Tom," she said with calm conviction.
"Maybe," he replied. "But, Jenny, I can't wait for that. Wish I could. I'm still only—what you know. Same time, you're back home now, and you've been visiting with your titled friends. Also you've seen how your father looks at it, and how—"
"What does all that amount to—even papa's anger? If only that were all!"
"Jenny! then you still—?" His voice quivered with passion. "My little girl!—how I love you! God I how I love you! I never thought much of girls, but I loved you the first time I ever set eyes on you, there in the Transvaal. That's why I threw up the management of the mine. I knew who your father was; I knew I hadn't a ghost of a show. But I followed you to Cape Town—couldn't help it!"
"You—you old silly!" she murmured, half frightened by the greatness of his passion. "You should have known I was only a shallow society girl!"
"Shallow?—you? You're deep as blue water!"
"The ocean is fickle."
"You're not; you're true! You've lived! I've seen you face with a smile what many a man would have run from."
"Because with me was one who would have died sooner than that harm should come to me! Those weeks, those wonderful weeks that we lived, so close to primitive, savage Nature—bloody fanged Nature!—those weeks that I stood by your side and saw her paint for us her beautiful, terrible pictures of Life, pictures whose blue was the storm-wave and the sky veiled with fever-haze, whose white was the roaring surf and the glare of thunderbolts, whose red was fire and blood! And you saved me from all—all! I had never even dreamt that a man could be so courageous, so enduring, so strong!"
His face clouded, and he gave back before her radiant look.