"It is marvellous," he went on, dismissing the future in an effort to
shake himself into a wholesomer frame of mind. "It has been one long
continuous miracle, the last few months, since you have been with me.
We have seen very little of each other, you know, since your childhood,
and when I think upon it soberly it is hard to realize that you are
really mine, sprung from me, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. As
the tangle-haired wild young creature of Dyea,--a healthy, little,
natural animal and nothing more,--it required no imagination to accept
you as one of the breed of Welse. But as Frona, the woman, as you were
to-night, as you are now as I look at you, as you have been since you
came down the Yukon, it is hard . . . I cannot realize . . . I . . ."
He faltered and threw up his hands helplessly. "I almost wish that I
had given you no education, that I had kept you with me, faring with
me, adventuring with me, achieving with me, and failing with me. I
would have known you, now, as we sit by the fire. As it is, I do not.
To that which I did know there has been added, somehow (what shall I
call it?), a subtlety; complexity,--favorite words of yours,--which is
beyond me.
"No." He waved the speech abruptly from her lips. She came over and
knelt at his feet, resting her head on his knee and clasping his hand
in firm sympathy.
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