"But how could you have missed the train so often?"

"I cannot account for it. I am not in the habit of doing so. Indeed, I think it was because I was overly anxious."

She laughed then, to herself, elfin like.

"I have been curious to see you for a long time."

He was silent, and his eyes did not return the look she had given him.

"Ever since I received _that_ letter...."

And still he did not reply. The subject was too suggestive, not to say embarrassing; but she was bold. He couldn't know now whether she was serious or merely joking; but notwithstanding it sounded pleasant to his ears. He could hear her voice for a long time, he was sure, and not grow weary.... We should pause at this point to make known--perhaps explain, that the persons of our story are the unconventional. And with the unconventional what was in their minds was most likely to be discussed.

The woman, therefore, was the most curious. She was a woman, and in truth she would have married the man beside her had he have come hither when he had gone to Chicago.

"What did you do with your little wife?"

He raised his eyes then, not to look at her, but because of something he did not himself understand. Perhaps it just happened so? She regarded him again; looked him full in the eyes, and his eyes spoke more than words. Strangely she understood all, almost in a flash, and was sorry.

She regretted that she had spoken so directly. She admired him now. When he had looked up, and like that, she had seemed to see and understand at last the man he was.

"Pardon me, please," she said, and rising quickly, took a chair nearer his. She reached and touched him on the arm. "I didn't--I--well, I didn't intend to be bold." She paused in confusion, and then went on:

"I hope you will pardon me. I am sure I didn't intend to embarrass you."

"It is all right," he said. "And since you have asked me, may I explain?"

It was she who was now embarrassed. She looked away in great confusion.

She was bolder than the conventional girl as a rule; but the subject was delicate. Yet she wanted to hear the story that she knew he would never tell. If he did, he was not the type of man she had estimated.

"Of course you would think me a cad, a--well, I have my opinion of a man that would tell _his_ side of such a story to a _woman_."

She looked at him then without any embarrassment in her eyes. She was able to read the man and all that was him clearly. She smiled a smile after this that was one of satisfaction, and at that moment her sisters called that the meal was ready.

CHAPTER V

"TELL ME WHY YOU DIDN'T ANSWER THE LAST LETTER I WROTE YOU"

"Now I wish you would tell me all about yourself, that is, all you _care_ to tell," said Irene Grey to the man who sat beside her on the veranda of their beautiful home, some time after luncheon had been served. "I have always been peculiarly interested in you and your life alone off there in the Northwest," whereupon she made herself comfortable and prepared to listen.

"Oh," he said hesitatingly, thinking of the series of dry years and their attendant disaster, and hoping that he could find some way of avoiding a conversation in which that was involved. "I really don't consider there is much to relate. My life has been rather--well, in a measure uneventful."

"Oh, but it hasn't, I know," she protested. "All alone you were for so many years, and you have been, so I have been told, an untiring worker."

She was anxious, he could see, but withal sincere, and in the course of the afternoon, she told him of how her father had came to Kansas a poor man, bought the land now a part of what they owned on payments, found that raising potatoes was profitable--especially when they were ready for the early market, and later after his marriage to her mother, and with her mother's assistance, had succeeded. From where they sat, their property stretched before them in the valley of the Kaw, and comprised several hundred acres of the richest soil in the state. Indeed, his success was widely known, and Jean Baptiste had been rather curious to know the family intimately.

After some time he walked with her through three hundred acres of potatoes that lay in the valley before the house, and he had for the first time in his life, the opportunity to study potato raising on a large scale.

"From your conversation it seems that you raise potatoes on the same ground every year. I am curious to know how this is done, for even on the blackest soil in the country I live, this is regarded as quite impossible with any success."

"Well, it is generally so; but we have found that to plow the land after the potatoes have been dug, and then seed the same in turnips is practical. When the turnips, with their wealth of green leaves are at their best, then, we plow them under and the freezing does the rest."

"A wonderful mulch!"

"It is very simple when one looks into it." They were walking through the fields, and without her knowing it, he studied her. The kind of girl and the kind of family his race needed, he could see. In his observation of the clan to which he had been born, practicability was the greatest need. Indeed he was sometimes surprised that his race could be so impracticable. Further west in this State, his uncles, who, like all Negroes previous to the emancipation, had been born slaves, had gone West in the latter seventies and early eighties, and settled on land.

With time this land had mounted to great values and the holders had been made well-to-do thereby. A case of evolution, on all sides. Over all the Central West, this had been so. At the price land now brought it would have been impossible for any to own land. There happened, then as had recently, a series of dry years--seemingly about every twenty years. To pull through such a siege, the old settlers usually did much better than the new. To begin with, they were financially better able; but on the other hand, they did not, as a rule, take the chances new settlers were inclined to take. Because two or three years were seasonable, and crops were good, they did not become overly enthusiastic and plunge deeply into debt as he had done. He could see his error now, and the chances new settlers were inclined to take. Because moreover, he had been so much alone--his wedded life had been so brief, and even during it, he was confused so much with disadvantages, that he had never attempted to subsidize his farming with stock raising. Perhaps this had been his most serious mistake; to have had a hundred head of cattle during such a period as had just passed, would have been to have gone through it without disaster.

He felt rather guilty as he strolled beside this girl whose father had succeeded. But one thing he would not do, and that was make excuses. He had ever been opposed to excusing away his failures. If he had failed, he had failed, no excuses should be resorted to. But as they strolled through the fields of potatoes he could not help observe the contrast between the woman he had married, and the one now beside him that he might have had for wife. Here was one, and he did not know her so well as to conclude what kind of girl in all things she was, but it was a self evident fact that she was practical. Whereas, he had only to recall that not only had his wife been impractical, but that her father before her had been so. He recalled that awful night before he had taken her away, at Colome, when that worthy when he chanced to use the word practical, had exclaimed: "I'm so tired of hearing that word I do not know what to do!" and it was seconded by his cohort in evil, Ethel.

His race was filled with such as N.J. McCarthy, he knew; but not only were they hypocrites, and in a measure enemies to success but enemies to society as well. How many were there in his race who purported to be sacrificing their very soul for the cause of Ethiopia but when so little as medical aid was required in their families, called in a white physician to administer the same. This had been the case of his august father-in-law all his evil life.

"Would you like to walk down by the river?" she said now, and looked up into his face. She had been silent while he was so deeply engrossed in thought, and upon hearing her voice he started abruptly.

"What--why--what's the matter?" she inquired anxiously.

"Nothing," he said quickly, coloring guiltily. "I was just thinking."

"Of what?" she asked artfully.

"Of you," he said evasively.

"No, you weren't," she said easily. "On the contrary, I venture to suggest that you were thinking of yourself, your life and what it has been."

"You are psychological."

"But I have guessed correctly, haven't I?"

"I'm compelled to agree that you have."

They had reached the river now, and took a seat where they could look out over its swiftly moving waters.

"Frankly I wish you would tell me of your life," she said seriously. "My brother who, as you know is now dead, told me so much of you. Indeed, he was so very much impressed with you and your ways. He used to tell me of what an extraordinary character you were, and I was so anxious to meet you."

He was silent, but she was an unconventionally bold person. She was curious, and the more he was silent on such topics, the more anxious she became to know the secret that he held.

"I appreciate your silence," she said, and gave him the spell of her wonderful eyes. Stretched there under a walnut she was the picture of enchantment. Almost he wanted to forget the years and what had passed with them since she wrote him that letter that he had received too late.

"I want to ask you one question--have wanted to ask it for years," she pursued. "I want to ask it because, somehow, I am not able to regard you as a flirt." She paused then, and regarded him with her quick eyes, expectantly. But he made no answer, so she went on. "From what _I_ have heard, I think I may be free to discuss this," and she paused again, with her eyes asking that she may.

He nodded.

"Well, of course," she resumed, as if glad that she might tell what was in her mind. "It is not--should not be the woman to ask it, either; but won't you tell me why you didn't answer the last letter I wrote you--tell me why you _didn't_ come on the visit you suggested?"

He caught his breath sharply, whereat, she looked up and into his eyes.

His lips had parted, but merely to exclaim, but upon quick thought he had hesitated.

"Yes?"