But although she succeeded in seeing the cripple made teller—as a first step, she was firmly convinced, on the road to a partnership—she was not delivered from her fear. The unspoken dread that he might throw aside the humble, though precious, “sure thing” for this chimera beckoning from the North—the dread of it became the main factor in their spiritual relation. For not only did she never free herself from her grudging love of the man—and never, therefore, from her shrinking at the prospect of separation—not only did she conceive of him in the American way as the property of his family and bound as bondsmen are to serve them to the end, but in addition to all that, more and more as the years went on, did she come profoundly to disbelieve in the validity of his story. “Do you still think you may go back there one day?” she burst out on one occasion, looking darkly at the reconnaissance map that hung on the dining-room wall. Mar mumbled something about the satisfaction in the verifying of an impression. “Verifying _what_? How do you verify pure fancy?” Then turning suddenly upon him, “If ever you do go, you’ll only be giving a fantastic reason for a restless man’s longing to leave his home.” At moments conceived by her to be critical, she would toss at him the reproach of his well-known visionariness, and all their old foolish hope and its utter loss would be held up to scorn in her saying, apropos of something quite foreign: “That’s like some one I once knew who wanted people to believe in a miracle. But not without proof, he said. He _had_ proof—absolute proof—only he’d lost it.” Or, less offensive, but for Mar no less pointed, the form of skepticism his loss of the nugget had crystallized for her, “You’ve got to have something to _show_ to a Missourian.” This was later not only adopted by her boys as a favorite family gibe, but introduced into their school, and thence spread abroad as a foolish and pointless saying sometimes will, no one quite knowing why, till all of that generation, whatever their origin, would say with a wag of the head: “You’ve got to _show_ me—I’m from Missouri,” whenever they wished to announce themselves acute fellows by no means to be taken in.