But he did clearly see and feel that he loved her. And she now saw in his curiously changed face what was in his mind. She looked away instantly--her expression was uneasy, almost frightened. “Here we are--at the school,” she said nervously as they turned a corner and came in sight of three great buildings--plain yet attractive--which faced three sides of a broad lawn in the centre of which a large and artistic fountain was playing.
He never could give a clear account of that school. He remembered the manager--a Mr. Worthington, with a strong and serious, yet anything but solemn face, with rather homely features except a pair of extraordinary eyes. He remembered many classrooms where all sorts of feminine enterprises were going forward with energetic informality. He remembered many girls--uncommonly clean, bright, well-dressed girls with agreeable voices and manners. He remembered many smiles and other evidences of health and spirits. He remembered many babies--all in one big, sunny room, chirping and crowing and gurgling, balancing on uncertain little lumps of feet or crawling toilsomely. “Practice babies,” Nelly called them, and he thought, “If this is the way her girls succeed with mere ‘practice babies,’ what won’t they make of their own?” Finally, he remembered--Nelly. All his other memories were a hazy background for her tall, graceful figure and wonderful, luminous face. Her he never forgot in the smallest detail of look or gesture.
When they were once more in the street, walking toward the car, he began abruptly: “I came over here--to America--because I was ruined--because we were going to be sold up and chucked out in the autumn. I came--I’m ashamed to put it into words--I’d rather you’d imagine--you can, easy enough. It’s often done and nothing’s thought of it--at least on our side of the water. This morning--in fact, just before luncheon--I got a cable from my sister. Our luck has turned, and----”
“I’m very glad,” she murmured as he paused.
“I don’t wish to go back,” he went on impetuously, his drawl gone. “I wish--it’s you I want. And I ask you to give me a chance. I don’t think I’m such a frightfully bad sort, as men go. And while I ain’t fit for you to walk on, where’s the man that is? And perhaps if I were less fit I couldn’t care for you--all the height from down where I am to up where you are.”