“Listen, Jeff, let me tell you--I didn’t intend to, but perhaps it’s best. After I sent you that last letter, I had a sudden fear that I had put in the sheet I didn’t mean you to see. It was only a second, and then I felt sure I had burned it. But for a little while I--I almost wished I had, and in my heart I said I would give up and that I would write you to come. It seemed as if you would know anyway, and as if you were coming, without my telling you. And for three or four days I sat at my window and watched for you and dreamed about our love, and about our life together at beautiful Fairmount--” she hesitated an instant and blushed faintly, but the true woman in her sent her on--“with our children growing up around us, and we so happy and growing old together-- Oh, Jeff, it was such a beautiful dream!” “Not half so beautiful or happy as the reality would be, sweetheart! Oh, Rhoda, won’t you make it true!” “We’d be happy for a while, dear, but we’d wake up, sooner or later, just as I did, and then we’d find out that there was no true marriage between us, and our happiness would end.” Denial was in his face and voice as he quickly answered: “Never, Rhoda! I can’t believe it! Why should we waken? Why did you?” “It was the Dred Scott decision.” He smiled incredulously. “I suppose I would have anyway, after a little,” she went on, “if you hadn’t got here first--” and she smiled up at him ingenuously. “O, how I wish I had! If it hadn’t been for that storm--” “It’s better to wake up too soon than too late,” she broke in. “As soon as I knew about that decision and all that the chief justice had said, and understood how delighted the South is over it, and how it has saddened and discouraged all of us up here at the North who hate slavery, then I saw once more that I couldn’t compromise with my conscience, not the least little bit.” “But, Rhoda, you won’t have to, if I free my slaves. And I will!” “I’ve thought that all out, and it wouldn’t help us any--though I’d be glad for the slaves. Don’t you see, Jeff, that if you should free them, still believing in slavery as you do, and still being devoted to the South and wanting with all your soul to further her interests, which you think are bound up in slavery--don’t you see that after a while you would begin to feel that for my sake you had done something wrong, had been false to your own ideals? And I would know it and it would make me unhappy. I don’t think, Jeff, that I’d want you to free your negroes, except as you might be convinced that it’s wrong to keep them enslaved.” She stopped and looked up at him with her flashing smile. “I’ll run every one of them off to freedom that I can get a chance to, but--” He smiled back at her indulgently, and then they both laughed a little, glad of the relief from the high tension which had held them.