"At the risk of slipping up again, Miss Dows," he said gently, dropping into her dialect with utterly unconscious flattery, "I am going to ask you to teach me everything YOU wish, to be all that YOU demand--which would be far better.

You have said we were good friends; I want you to let me hope to be more.

I want you to overlook my deficiencies and the differences of my race and let me meet you on the only level where I can claim to be the equal of your own people--that of loving you.

Give me only the same chance you gave the other poor fellow who sleeps yonder--the same chance you gave the luckier man who carried the wreath for you to put upon his grave." She had listened with delicately knitted brows, the faintest touch of color, and a half-laughing, half-superior disapprobation.

When he had finished, she uttered a plaintive little sigh.