"For years," I said, "that dream of you was the only thing that kept my Gift awake. Times I would lose it, and then I would dream again and it would come back. I know now when I lost it completely, it was about a year before I saw you that time in Chicago." I had told him of that, too. "That year I married." I could see that there was something in the recollection always that weighed upon him. "I didn't," he said, "until after my aunt had told me about you. I went back there when she died; she was always good to me. You know, don't you, Olive, that in spite of everything ... everything ... there is only you." "Let us not talk of it." I do not know how it is proper to feel on such occasions, but I supposed that he must have had as I had, stinging tears to think of the dead and how their love was overmatched by this present wonder. I would have had, somehow, Tommy and my boy to share in it. I went rather tardily to make my apologies to Mrs. Franklin Shane. I hope they sounded natural. "My _dear_! you needn't expect me to be surprised at _anything_ Helmeth Garrett does." She talked habitually in italics. "My husband says that it is only because he so generally does right, that it is at all possible to get along with him." I snapped up crumbs like this with avidity. "His wife, too, you must have known her." I hinted. This was at the end of a rather complete account of Helmeth's business relations with Mr. Shane. "Oh, well," I could see Christian charity struggling with Mrs. Shane's profound conviction of the rectitude of her own way of life. "She was a _good_ woman, but no--imagination." She was so pleased to have hit upon a word which carried no intrinsic condemnation that she repeated it. "No imagination whatever. One feels," she modified the edge of her judgment still further, "that so much might have been made out of Mr. Garrett. These self-made men are so difficult." "Are you difficult?" I demanded when I had retailed the conversation to him that evening. "I suppose so; anyway I am self-made. She is right so far; I dare say it is badly done. You'll have to take a few tucks in me." "Not a tuck. I like you the way you are. Oh, I like you ... I like you _so_!" There was an interval after this before we could go on again. "Tell me how you made yourself, Helmeth. Don't leave anything out, not a single thing." "By mistakes mostly. Every time I had made one I knew it was a mistake and I didn't do it again. I don't know that I'm much of a success anyway, but I've got a large assortment of things not to do." "That was the way I learned how to act; filling in behind!" "I thought that came by instinct. What counts with a man, is not so much getting to know how to do it, but getting a chance to prove to other people that he knows how." "I've been through that too," I told him, but he was bent on making himself clear. "I suppose I ought to tell you, Olivia, I'm only a sort of scab engineer. I haven't any papers."