I wonder if she deceived me when she affected to think that there were others like us, or whether I saw through her from the first, she was so easily seen through.

When she seemed to agree with them that it would be impossible to give me a college education, was I so easily taken in, or did I know already what ambitions burned behind that dear face?
when they spoke of the chairs as the goal quickly reached, was I such a newcomer that her timid lips must say 'They are but a beginning' before I heard the words?
And when we were left together, did I laugh at the great things that were in her mind, or had she to whisper them to me first, and then did I put my arm round her and tell her that I would help?
Thus it was for such a long time: it is strange to me to feel that it was not so from the beginning.
It is all guess-work for six years, and she whom I see in them is the woman who came suddenly into view when they were at an end.

Her timid lips I have said, but they were not timid then, and when I knew her the timid lips had come.

The soft face--they say the face was not so soft then.

The shawl that was flung over her--we had not begun to hunt her with a shawl, nor to make our bodies a screen between her and the draughts, nor to creep into her room a score of times in the night to stand looking at her as she slept.