“Do not think,” he said, “that I haven’t tenderness for you. I am filled with it. But I want to have our talk. I want to know what you expect me to believe and how you want me to live.” He felt her hand stiffen in his. “Whether or not we are worth while to each other,” she added. “Yes,” he said. And then she began to talk, telling him in a quiet steady voice that steadied something in him what she wanted to make out of her life. Her idea was one of service to mankind through children. She had seen girl friends of hers, with whom she had gone to school, grow up and marry. They had wealth and education, fine well-trained bodies, and they had been married only to live lives more fully devoted to pleasure. One or two who had married poor men had only done so to satisfy a passion in themselves, and after marriage had joined the others in the hungry pursuit of pleasure. “They do nothing at all,” she said, “to repay the world for the things given them, the wealth and well-trained bodies and the disciplined minds. They go through life day after day and year after year wasting themselves and come in the end to nothing but indolent, slovenly vanity.” She had thought it all out and had tried to plan for herself a life with other ends, and wanted a husband in accord with her ideas. “That isn’t so difficult,” she said, “I can find a man whom I can control and who will believe as I believe. My money gives me that power. But I want him to be a real man, a man of ability, a man who does things for himself, one fitted by his life and his achievements to be the father of children who do things. And so I began thinking about you. I got the men who come to the house to talk of you.” She hung her head and laughed like a bashful boy. “I know much of the story of your early life out in that Iowa town,” she said. “I got the story of your life and your achievements out there from some one who knew you well.” The idea seemed wonderfully simple and beautiful to Sam. It seemed to add tremendously to the dignity and nobility of his feeling for her. He stopped in the path and swung her about facing him. They were alone in that end of the park. The soft darkness of the summer night had settled over them. In the grass at their feet a cricket sang loudly. He made a movement to take her into his arms. “It is wonderful,” he said.