He had looked straight before him while she talked; now he looked down at her, stirred for almost the first time in his life by a sense of fellow-feeling. "Yes, I understand," he said steadily. "It takes the spirit out of you--gives you over to the very devil--to be dreaded and pitied--almost from your cradle up. I understand, Ann. It's so in some families--for one reason or another.... Some of us are born misfits; we're throwbacks--to something or some one that doesn't quite jibe with our environment. I reckon you're a bit too fine and spirited for your environment, Ann." He was looking at her brow and eyes, not the brow and eyes of a Penniman--not as he had known them. Ann's sense of isolation caught at the note of sympathy, and she gave her decision into his keeping. "I can't bear things as they are, Mr. Garvin. I made up my mind this morning--I'm going away just as soon as I can." She had startled him. "_You_, go away? Why, you're nothing but a child, Ann! Where could you go?" Ann lifted her hands, held them out for him to see. He had noticed them before, not small hands, work-hardened, but shapely and flexible, with tapering fingers blunted a little at the tips, almost certain sign of manual labor imposed upon childhood. "Look at them!" Ann said tensely. "Would I work any harder with them for other people, than I have for my people? I'm goin'--there's the city for me to go to." Garvin knew, far better than a stranger would, what such a decision meant to a Penniman--or a Westmore. It meant flinging away caste. They could toil unceasingly, bend their backs to the most menial labor, so long as they toiled upon their own freehold. But to become a servitor, labor with their hands for a wage! "You can't do that, Ann," he said positively. "I can, and I will," Ann returned with equal decision. "If you tried such a thing, your father would bring you back--you're not of age." She drew a short breath and considered a moment. "But I will be in the fall--they can't make me come back then, can they?" "No--" Garvin said slowly. "They couldn't--not if you were determined." He was thinking. A possibility had occurred to him that made him flush; brought him back to the thing to which he had given himself up of late, his desire for Ann.... The thing that was almost impossible here was possible in the city. And what a haven to escape to!... He looked at her as she distressfully pondered her future. She had never seemed more lovable or less a girl to be taken by storm; she had shown an amount of decision he had not known she possessed. He had her confidence; he would do well to keep it. "If you are determined enough, Ann, and careful to keep what you mean to do a secret, I think you could carry it through," he supplemented. "And why shouldn't you go? Almost anything is better than life as you've had it. I'll help you to go, when you're ready for it."