"Now, you look more like yourself," he smiled admiringly, as he looked down on her white dress and auburn hair, drooping low over her neck and shoulders. "Tell me about yourself and how you like it at the mill," he went on as he sat down. "Oh, you will not be willing to speak to me now--now that I am a mill-girl," she added. "Do you know? Clay--" "I know that, aside from being beautiful, you have just begun to be truly womanly in my sight." "Oh, Clay, do you really think that? It is the first good word that has been spoken to me since--since my--disgrace." He turned quickly: "Your disgrace! Do you call it disgrace to work--to make an honest living--to be independent and self-reliant?" He picked up his bag of samples and she saw that his hands had become hard and sunburnt from the plow handles. "Helen," he went on earnestly, "that is one of the hide-bound tyrannies that must be banished from our Southland--banished as that other tyranny, slavery, has been banished--a sin, which, with no fault of our own, we inherited from the centuries. We shall never be truly great--as God intended we should be great--until we learn to work. We have the noblest and sunniest of lands, with more resources than man now dreams of, a greater future than we know of if we will only work--work and develop them. You have set an example for every girl in the South who has been thrown upon her own resources. Never before in my life have I cared--so--much--for you." And he blushed as he said it, and fumbled his samples. "Then you do care some for me?" she asked pleadingly. She was heart-sick for sympathy and did not know just what she said. He flushed and started to speak. He looked at her, and his big glasses quivered with the suppressed emotions which lay behind them in his eyes. But he saw that she did not love him, that she was begging for sympathy and not for love. Besides, what right had he to plan to bring another to share his poverty? He mounted his horse as one afraid to trust himself to stay longer. But he touched her hair in his awkward, funny way, before he swung himself into the saddle, and Helen, as she went into the desolate home, felt uplifted as never before. Never before had she seen work in that light--nor love. CHAPTER IV MAGGIE It was Maggie's last day at the mill, and she had been unusually thoughtful. Her face was more pinched, Helen thought, and the sadness in her eyes had increased. Helen had proved to be an apt pupil, and Maggie declared that thereafter she would be able to run her machine without assistance.