"Whether you meant to or not isn't the point. You did teach me that and a lot of other things. I didn't know it at the time, and went plugging ahead, thinking everything was just the same when it wasn't at all. Frances was headed one way and I was headed another. Then she went abroad, and after that I learned faster than ever. I learned what a home can be made to mean, and work can be made to mean, and life can be made to mean. All those things you were teaching me. I didn't know it, and you didn't know it, and Frances didn't know it. That ten thousand grew less and less important to me, and all the while I thought it must be growing less and less important to her. I thought that way after the walks in the park and the walks in the country and that night at Coney." She shuddered. "I thought it even after she came back--even after my talk with Stuyvesant. He told me I was a fool and that Frances wouldn't listen to me. I didn't believe him and put it up to her. And then--for the first time--I saw that what I had been learning she had not been learning." Don turned and looked at the girl by his side. It was growing dark now, so that he could not see her very well; but he saw that she was huddled up as he had found her that day in the little restaurant. "Frances didn't have the nerve to come with me," he said. "Her father stood in the way, and she couldn't get by him. I want to be fair about this. At the beginning, if she'd come with me I'd have married her--though Lord knows how it would have worked out. But she didn't dare--and she's a pretty good sport, too. There's a lot in her she doesn't know anything about. It would do her good to know you." Again he paused. It was as if he were trying hard to keep his balance. "I want her to know you," he went on. "Because, after all, it was she who made me see you. There, in a second, in the park, she pointed you out to me, until you stood before me as clear as the star by the Big Dipper. She said, 'It's some other girl you're seeing in me--a girl who would dare to go hungry with you.' Then I knew. So I came right to you." She was still huddled up. "And here I am," he concluded. There he was. He did not need to remind her of that. Even when she closed her eyes so that she might not see him, she was aware of it. Even when he was through talking and she did not hear his voice, she was aware of it. And, though she was miserable about it, she would have been more miserable had he been anywhere else. "I'm here, little girl," he said patiently. "Even after I told you to go away," she choked. "Even after you told me to go away." "If you only hadn't come at all!" "What else was there for me to do?" "You--you could have gone to that camp with her. She wanted you to go." "I told her I couldn't go there--long before I knew why." "You could have gone--oh, there are so many other places you could go! And this is the only place I _could_ go."