"Yes--I care--at first--when it is the right one that praises. But there is always a reaction of self-distrust. It seems humiliating," she went on more frankly, "to have been praised for having done some common thing--solved a problem, or written a poem, or handled a piano--a little more or less cleverly, when one comes to think what education and art are. And _personal_ admiration--that always seems a contemptible sort of folly, if you think of what great things there are to do and be in the world, and the lives the great lonely souls have lived." "Your achievement seems little to you," said Will, with some gloom, "because, I suppose, more always opens to you. To me, who have made none--" "Why, Will," she cried, with the most genuine dissent. "You have done more than almost any one I know. Do you call it nothing to do a college curriculum alone and under all sorts of hindrances? And I know that it was done well and thoroughly." "Oh, yes," he said, indifferently, tossing bits of clover into the stream, "I could have passed an A. B. fast enough. But you know better than I do, Winifred, that that's the least of a college course. I've seen fellows that had to work their way through and had no spare time or energy, and they always lacked a great deal of the college flavor; the education didn't permeate 'em. Then there are other things--music, art, social opportunities, capacity of expression--that are no slight things to miss; they make up more of first-class living than Greek optatives or the equation of a surface. It isn't really possible for a man, not backed by circumstances, to get himself into a position that some are born to." He let the clover be and looked up. "Oh, I'm not growling, Winifred," he said, hastily, smiling, as he saw her about to speak eagerly. "I'm only making philosophical observations, and using myself as an illustration. Why in the world should I growl to find myself stranded half way up, when there is a townful of people behind us clear down at the bottom, and no more their fault than mine? Why should I mind that I am left out from the best chances, any more than that a thousand other fellows are? 'What Act of Legislature was there that' _I_ should be cultured?" She was leaning forward with her irresistible eyes full on his, and face and voice vivified with that sympathetic expressiveness that makes speech count for far more than the words.