She spoke without bitterness, as though questioning his faculty of comprehension, and she saw the dark colour creep into his face. Still, it was not the hue of anger, and, stooping, he gently seized the hand that wore the ring. "My dear," he said, "you must have many. I can feel it now, and, when I married you, I was, perhaps, doing wrong. How could one expect you to be content with such a man as I am?" He stopped a moment, and smiled wistfully. "I almost think I know how the life you lead here must look to you. You can see it stretching out in front of you, all arid and hopeless, like those furrows yesterday. Still, now you see them green with promise. The rain has come." "Ah," said Carrie; "still, the wheat was hidden there, and in some of us there are only weeds and tares, while, even if there is among them a little wholesome grain, who knows if the rain will ever come at all?" She looked up at him and hesitated. "Charley, do you feel that I have cheated you very badly?" "How?" "Oh, I suppose you will not admit it. One could thank you for that, but you know. Have I ever been a companion to you? Isn't your life harder than it was before?" Leland's grasp of her hand grew tighter. "Well," he said, "there are times when one must talk, and I have felt that; but I felt, too, that, if I could wait, there would be a change." "I think you must have been always hopeful." "Hope," said Leland gravely, "is a little like the germ in the wheat. It lies dormant; but, while its husk lasts, it will not die. I think," and he glanced back at the vast sweep of sprouting green, "I was like that dusty ploughing, waiting for the rain." The girl was silent for a while, though she, too, was conscious of a curious stirring of her nature, which showed itself by the warmth in her cheeks. The man had, she felt, chosen a peculiarly fitting symbolism, for, when the beneficent rain had touched the arid clods, they had put on beauty with sudden life and growth. "And what do you expect, then?" she asked. Leland smiled. "I don't quite know, but it must be something good and beautiful. What is in all Nature is in us too. My dear," and he made a little gesture, "one can feel, and not quite understand. The wheat yonder doesn't know why and how it grows, but, since you gave me your promise at Barrock-holme, I have been waiting for something to come to me." "Ah," said Carrie again, "after what has happened, you can expect it still?" The man looked at her gravely. "Hope is indestructible, and some day the rain will come. One cannot hurry it, one can only work and wait." Carrie smiled a little, though once more pride and a curious tenderness struggled within her. "Well," she said, "in the meantime, Jake is no doubt wondering whether we are coming in to breakfast." They turned, and went back to the house, with the sunshine bright upon them, and the clean scents of the soil in their nostrils. The gladness that was in all things reacted upon them both.