He did not talk well, was clumsy, not at all eloquent, but magically she reconstructed the hopes and dreams of his ambitious youth.

From a few bald phrases she fashioned the thunderbolt which shattered them, saw him stunned, then alive again, struggling.

With every ready imagination she leaped full upon the fires of an ambition which accepted no check but fed upon difficulty and overleapt obstacles.

Between stories of his early college life, her sympathy sensed the deadly strain which his narrative missed and, long before he mentioned it, her foresight had descried the coming of hard won success.
But the really vital thing, the core of the short history, she followed slowly word by word, anxiously.

It told of wonders which she did not know--love, passion, despair! Now indeed he seemed to be speaking in a strange language--yet not strange entirely.