Any Man and Any Woman

THE new heaven and the new earth had just opened before the two young people. The girl’s shy eyes were raised and looked evenly into her lover’s eager face, and both her hands lay contented in his clasp.

“Yes, and yes! you dear boy,” she said.

“Mildred!” he cried, and then, for a while, there were no more words.

The sober, quietly ticking old clock on the mantel had never been so utterly disregarded before in all its long life. Its slender steel hands moved around with an astonished dignity in being so entirely forgotten, as some placid chaperon might have slowly realized that her very existence no longer counted for anything. It was the fire, whispering to itself with soft, crackling laughter, that broke the spell at last. A big stick, burned at the middle, fell apart, and one end scattered sparks upon the rug. The young man was betrayed into a sudden leap to brush back the little red coals, and then, again, there were two persons, very close to each other and very blushingly happy, but still two responsible human beings, capable of articulate speech, and conscious once more of the world in which they lived.

“Let’s always have an open fire in — in our house, Arthur,” suggested Mildred, with a rose color in her cheeks for which the blazing hickory on the hearth was not responsible.

“Always — all summer, too,” echoed Arthur, in munificent assent. “And it will always mean just this thing to us, dear, — that it heard your promise, and it is a witness between us that nothing in the world can ever make me lose you, now;” and Arthur’s eyes glowed into Mildred’s until the long lashes once more hid their retreat.

“Nothing can ever come between us, now, can it, dear ?” she whispered as she leaned against his shoulder, and her hand clung in his strong clasp.

“Never, my Mildred,” murmured the discoverer of a new world to his fellow adventurer. “And it seems so wonderful to think that all this happiness should have come to me, who don’t deserve half of it,” he added, virtuously, if humbly enough.

“Why, yes, you do deserve all I can ever hope to give you, Arthur— I know you do, and you must not talk in that way — it hurts me.”

“But no man could ever be quite good enough for you, dearest,” he said softly. “And of course I don’t mean that I am wicked in any way, but only that you are such an angel, and I am just a man, who has had to live a man’s life, so different from the sweet, sheltered life of a woman, you know.”

He stopped for a moment, in a sudden pause, and then went on, with a touch of awkwardness, “I think — that is — I think I ought to tell you something, Mildred.”

Quite unconsciously to herself, she was not leaning against him so unreservedly, now.

“Why, yes, Arthur,” she said. “You know I always love to hear every word you tell me — something about yourself, you mean ?”

“Yes.” The word came out with a reserve which was instantly felt.

“But not unless you really want to, Arthur, of course. Why, I don’t know ” —

She was sitting quietly, now, but upright beside him and looking squarely at him. There was no lack of tenderness in her eyes, but there was something like surprise, too.

“I don’t want to hear it if it will hurt you to tell me, dear,” she said, very softly. “I don’t need to know. We trust each other, and I shall never ask you,”

“But I think I ought to tell you, dear,” he persisted. “ I think you have a right to know.”

“Why, it’s nothing—it could n’t be anything — dishonorable, Arthur” —

“Oh, no!” he said, quickly. “I think you are sure of that, are n’t you ? ”

“Of course I am, Arthur,” said the girl in a tone so tender that he half closed his eyes, as if suddenly conscious of an overpowering perfume.

He shifted his position, in a physical restlessness which was the reflection of the stirring of conscience that had made him unwilling to remain silent, at this moment, in the presence of the girl’s utter love and trust.

“I think I ought to tell you,” he repeated, haltingly. “You see — that is, it’s about myself — and another girl.”

She drew back with a little cry. “Another girl! Oh, Arthur, it did n’t seem as if there had ever been anybody but just ourselves in all our lives — it seemed as if we had existed just for each other since the beginning of all time.” And after a moment, “ Did — did you really love her, Arthur ?” while the color flashed up and then faded as quickly as it had come.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “I did, or I thought I did. We were engaged to be married.”

“ Oh ” — and Mildred’s hands clasped themselves tightly in her lap, and she sat shrinking into herself, her face as white as her frock.

“You see,” the man began slowly, “it was four or five years ago — long before I had known you, dear,” and his eyes sought her face. But Mildred’s eyes were hidden, and he blundered along.

“We were both very young, and we — I — I thought I was really in love with her, at first, and she with me, and it was six months before I realized that — that something was the matter — that things were not the same—that—oh, that I did n’t love her any more, or at least, I did n’t love her as — as I used to, and ” —

He floundered pitifully. Mildred did not speak, but her face was lifted, and her hand crept toward him and touched his arm.

“And so, you see, it was pretty hard, but it had to be broken off, and — it was broken off. And I tried to do the square thing, you know, for it would n’t have been right for me to go on, of course, and so it was all ended. But I thought I ought to tell you — I thought you ought to know.”

His eyes, which had strayed everywhere during his disjointed speech, now sought Mildred’s eagerly. She did not reply, for a few moments, and her own eyes were again turned away. Then, meeting his earnest gaze with a little hesitation, she said, —

“Yes, Arthur, I’m glad you told me, if it’s easier for you to share the knowledge of it with me. But hearing it all so suddenly startled and — and confused me, a little, for the moment. It was like reading somebody else’s letter by mistake. But I know you were as good and kind to her as—oh, as you always are, and — it must have been awfully hard for you to tell her.”

Arthur flushed a dark crimson.

“Why, Mildred!” he said, reproachfully, “ you know I could n’t do that.”

The girl looked at him in blank surprise.

“Why, you just told me you broke it off because you did n’t care for her any more!”

“Oh, Mildred! I did n’t say anything of the kind! How could I do such a — a contemptible thing ? Of course I did n’t break it off. I gave her the chance — it belonged to her. Everybody knows that! ”

The girl’s eyes were very wide, and when she spoke her voice was lower, and not quite steady.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she began; and then, “ oh, was it she who had changed her mind? Did n’t she care for you?” she ended breathlessly.

“Why, yes, I think she cared, of course,”the young man replied, a little impatience mingled with the regret in his tone, “but I did n’t love her as I had thought I did. Don’t you see? I had to make it as easy for her as I could. Any decent man would do that. It was the only honorable way out of it. I gave her the chance to break it off.”

Mildred hesitated between doubt and fear. She could see neither reason nor proper sequence in his words. They must be at cross-purposes, somehow.

“You say you tried to make it as easy for her as you could — what a strange thing! Why, it was nothing she knew about. How could she know unless you told her?” she said uncertainly.

Arthur had stretched his legs out toward the fire in a grotesque unconsciousness of what he was doing, and his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, while he stared into the glow of the burning logs and watched the white feathers of ash fall in little heaps between the brass firedogs. His heels were dug into the thick hearth-rug, and his whole attitude was that of a man who has completely forgotten himself in the sudden encounter with an abstract problem. Puzzled, a little startled, and with an indefinite sense of unseen danger, he searched his mind in perplexity quite as honest as it was profound, to his unanalytical habit of thought.

“Why,” he answered at last, with such a feeling of bewilderment as he might have had, when a schoolboy, if the axioms in his Euclid had suddenly become reversed before his eyes, “of course she could see, after a while, that it was — different, somehow. I — I had to let her see. I was n’t at her house so regularly —so often — and I stopped doing some little things — oh, I think I forgot to do them, perhaps. At any rate, it seemed forever, to me, before she saw” —

He stammered, and stopped. But he did not look toward Mildred, and did not see how still she sat, and how tightly her hands were clenched in her lap. He examined every separate coal in the fire, carefully, before he went on, with a simplicity of retrospective regret that no liar’s ingenuity could imitate, and a gathering fluency, as he stated his case: —

“It was pretty hard for me, Mildred. I wished to spare her all I could, but it certainly would not have been honorable for me to let things drift, since I felt sure that we should never be happy together. So I made up my mind to let the whole thing fall on me, and not to put her in a hard place on account of my own change of mind, or heart, or whatever it was. But it was nearly two months before she broke it, and I hope,” said the young man, with a deep sigh, “that a kind Heaven will never send me, in the future, even two hours of such pain as I endured during all that time.”

A long pause followed his last words. Suddenly Arthur felt himself grow cold from head to foot, and he became conscious that Mildred was looking at him as though from a great distance, and he heard her say, —

“I believe I understand what you have been telling me. You deliberately set yourself to create a different relation between you and her. You did n’t go to see her so often, you did n’t bring her flowers — you broke your appointments with her, too, did n’t you ?”

She waited for an answer. “Did n’t you?” she repeated.

“Why, yes — I think so,” said Arthur, wondering why the admission had suddenly become difficult when it had been one of the matters of course in the actual happening.

“And she wondered why you were so different,” Mildred went on calmly. “ She asked you why, did n’t she?”

She paused again.

“Yes,” said Arthur desperately, and wondered why he felt desperate.

“What did you tell her?”

A long pause. Then, “I don’t know,” said he.

“Why did n’t you tell her the truth ?” asked Mildred.

“ It would have been brutal!” said Arthur, with a flash of pride.

“Don’t you think it was brutal to torture the poor girl and keep her in the dark as to the reason ?” flashed back Mildred, swiftly as a mirror throws a reflection. “Don’t you think it was brutal to save yourself at her cost?”

“ Oh, how can you be so unfair! " cried out the man, leaping to his feet and staring at the girl as though she had been transformed into somebody he had never seen before. “I did n’t try to save myself at her cost — it is not true. I tried to save her! I couldn’t jilt the girl!”

“ But you did,” returned Mildred. “ You made it impossible for your affectionate relations to continue, and threw all the burden of changing them on her. Do you call that honorable?”

“Oh, Mildred!” The lover besought her in a sudden personal appeal. “What awful misunderstanding is this which has come up between us out of nothing at all ? Don’t misconstrue the attempt of a man to act honorably toward a girl he no longer wanted to marry, but for whom he had so much consideration that he wanted to take all the world’s blame to himself for the broken engagement. Why, how has all this cloud come upon us, dear” —

She broke in at the word of affection.

“No, Arthur, there is no misunderstanding. I understand it all perfectly, I think. That is, I understand what you did, but no woman in the world, I am sure, could understand why you did it, unless you were a poor coward, unwilling to face the circumstances.”

Mildred sat erect and motionless, except for the quick breathing which shook her slender figure. Arthur stood and regarded her with wonder. Surely this was not the girl who had just promised to marry him! Was it an awful dream ? But through the whirling bewilderment of his thoughts, one word burnt into his memory, and the smart was so stinging that he found his tongue: —

“ We seem to have very different ideas! " he said, with an entirely new sense of resentfulness. “You say you understand perfectly what I did. I confess I thought so myself, till now, but you-well, since you do understand it so thoroughly, will you kindly tell me what I did that makes it possible for you to think of me with horror, and to call me” — he paused, for an instant—“something very like a blackguard and a scoundrel?”

“ Oh, Arthur! ” —and those two words swam in the tenderness of her tone — “ I call you that!” But then her brow gathered into tiny lines, and her voice began, hesitatingly, to deepen into accusation as she spoke: —

“It seems to me that if a time comes to a man and a woman who have thought that they loved each other, when one of them finds it has been a mistake, that the person who has made the mistake owes instant explanation to the other one — who is innocent and ignorant of an altered state of things. Can anything be clearer ?’’

She went on without waiting for an answer.

“You found you did n’t love her, and knew that the engagement must be broken ; why did n’t you go to her and say that you had made a dreadful mistake, and ask if she could forgive you for the pain you were causing her, and set you free ?”

Arthur blazed out at her so vehemently that she, for the first time, was conscious of an unfamiliar personality in the man who stood before her.

“Can you conceive of a man being such a cowardly blackguard?” he demanded, almost roughly. “To go to a girl and say that he found he was tired of her and was not willing to fulfill his engagement— to toss her away as if she were an old glove, or—or — yesterday’s newspaper! ” he stammered, almost choking in the intensity of his dissent. “To make her face all the gossip and illnatured talk — to put her in the position of a discarded woman — good heavens! what an idea, Mildred! Why, such a man would deserve to be turned out of his club and cut on the street I am thankful to say that I have never known a man capable of such a thing!”

Mildred rose without answering, and walked to the window. Through the dull twilight she looked out into the gray tracery of treetops, and saw the dry leaves blowing about in dismal showers. She wondered if what he had said were really true. She wished she could accept it, even though it cast a shadow over her woman’s quick intuition which she was so wont to consider a clear light from within. She would willingly have stood as a child, shamed and set at naught in her own eyes, if so she could only come back into the circle of his arm, trusting him utterly, as she had trusted him an hour before. Trusting — yes, that was the heart of the matter. She suddenly felt that she did not trust him. Over and over the question beat through her brain, how could she trust a man who had once treated a woman like that ?

She stood for several minutes with wistful eyes, and then, with a little shiver, came back to the fire. She realized that she had suddenly become mature, and sad, and wise.

“ I cannot understand,” she said, “how it was possible for you to do it. It seems to me as dastardly a thing as to ask a person condemned to death to give the signal for his own execution.”

The man stared at her, and struggled to master himself. After a moment he said, —

“Do you know what you are saying? Think carefully, and tell me if you really mean what you have just said to me. Remember that you are only a young girl, with a limited experience of life. You are talking about a point of honor among men that has been definitely settled by general consent, and you are trying to judge, from your childish standpoint, a question which you might well leave to men who know the world’s ways better than you do. You told me a moment ago that I was a dastardly coward, and now I tell you that you think and talk like a child. You are ignorant of a subject in which you think you are wise, and you are unjust, deeply unjust to a man who loves you,”—he threw himself beside her, — “for oh, Mildred, I do love you with every drop of my blood! ”

Mildred drew her hands away from his grasp, but his tenderness swept away the impulse to meet reproach with reproach, and he burst out:

“Can’t we stop all this futile discussion, Mildred, and only remember that we love each other ? Oh, tell me! Don’t you love me ? You told me you did, an hour ago — surely an hour can’t make such a change in any one!”

“ I don’t think it is a question of loving, between us, at all,” she said, at last, “but of trusting. I think that you love me, and I know that I love you, and shall go on loving you ” — here she passed the back of her hand over her eyes — “ for oh, so long! But — I do not trust you. That is all. The man whom I promised to marry, an hour ago, is dead. He never really lived, except in my imagination. I thought of you as the soul of honor, and of chivalry, and tenderness, and now I find —as other women do, sometimes, too late — that I only saw a vision.”

As he would have spoken, the girl raised both hands, pitifully, in a little gesture of deprecation.

— “But —I do not know. Perhaps every man would feel that you did right. I believe every woman would feel that you did wrong. Let me tell you something. What you have been saying may be true from the point of view of most men — ordinary men, who wish to be honorable and comfortable at the same time. But let me tell you the woman’s side of it. Two years ago I had a girl friend to whom there came just this experience. The man to whom she was engaged grew tired of her and wished the engagement broken. He set about it just as you did. Probably to him, as to you, no other course seemed honorable. But during all those dreadful months when the poor girl was making up her mind what thesituation really was, I know (because I was with her and saw it, hourly) the horrible misery she suffered in mind, and heart, and pride. There was not any part of her, mind or spirit, that was not exquisitely tortured. She loved him loyally, and she was too brave and sweet to admit for a moment to herself that he was no longer worthy of that love. At first , she was bewildered, and it was very long before the meaning of all his neglect, his evasiveness, his deliberate playing at cross-purposes, came upon her. And then she told me. I have never seen such suffering.”

The girl trembled, and closed her eyes. “ It was harder than death for her to bear,” she went on. “ If it had been a noble sorrow, she could have endured it more easily. But it was the utter ignominy of the man’s behavior, the cruelty, the supreme selfishness of it all, that came near killing her. I thought then, as I do now, that none but a base man could do so base a deed. I never believed such a time would come to me. But now it has come, and I must meet it as bravely and with as much dignity as I can. But oh, Arthur!” — here her voice broke into a cry — “how can I bear it! How can I bear it!”

She turned and buried her face in the back of her chair. The man fell at her knees and covered her hands with kisses. She struggled from him, as he besought her.

“Mildred!” he protested, “don’t torture yourself so cruelly — it is not the same — nothing like that has come to you. As to what the other man did, I do not know, but I am sure that I could not honorably have done any more or any less than I did. Don’t punish me for the suffering of the other woman. Don’t, dear, — don’t turn away from me like this!”

The girl looked at him through aching eyes. “Perhaps I do not see it clearly,” she said. “I must have more time to think about it. And, oh, you must not stay here, now. I want to be all alone.”

The young man stood before her, his face very pale.

“I will go, now, but I shall come back to-morrow. I will not give you up like this, for a child’s whim,” he said.

She answered him dully, resignedly. “Yes, you may come to-morrow. I may be wronging you, and I must not do that. But to-morrow will do — I shall know, then, if I am ever to know.”

“ Ask your father — ask your brother,”he cried, holding out both arms to call the whole world to witness his plea. “Ask any man — there can be but one answer.”

She stood silently, pleading for respite. He kissed her hand and left her.

She did not come to dinner, and if her headache were but an excuse, she did not know it. Up and down in her mind wavered the two scales of the balance, and every time they fell on the side of the woman.

She heard all the clocks strike every hour of that night. The still, silvery chime of the old clock on the drawing-room mantel, the muffled gong in the diningroom, the church clock at the corner, the distant bell beyond the square. And each time, at the end, the last stroke told her the woman had been wronged.

Was she petty and narrow ? she asked herself. Did the memory of the other girl’s suffering distort her own sense of justice? She wished as fervently to be just to her lover as to reclaim for herself the happiness she had felt that she must put away. Had she a blind spot in her mind’s eye at that particular place ? Could it be that a woman’s love and trust ought to be disregarded in a man’s conventional solution of his dilemma — she would call it conventional, and not merely selfish. Was a man’s duty to a woman so different from a woman’s duty to a man ?

As she turned on her pillow, she yearned for the mother whom she could not remember. She would know; she could tell her. But her weeping brought no comforting spirit; her tormenting problem remained her own to solve.

At dawn she was no nearer a conclusion. Always the balance fell upon the woman’s side, and always she struck it up with her poignant desire to be just to the man. At last, she perceived that she was only beating the air. It was useless to benumb her mind with repetitions. She would cast the whole matter out of her thoughts, and wait until he should come to her. Then, at the first sight of him, she would know; then, her heart would tell her.

She went for a long walk in the cold air that stung her face and impelled to the physical exertion which finally made her body glow, and relieved the beating in her head. But at every street corner, through every vista of houses, in the contents of every shop window seen and unperceived, the wavering balance hung before her mind, and always the scale fell on the same side.

The hours, that had dragged so slowly through the night, now flew fast as birds. Panic seized her; she dared not think of standing before him, seeing his eyes, hearing his voice. And then — he was waiting for her, and as she came down the stairs her heart and head throbbed in a tumult of love and fear and uncertainty.

He stood before the fire, his face eager, His night had been less troubled than hers; the whole disagreement had seemed unreal and impossible to him, as he had thought over their talk, word by word. It was shifting and formless as smoke, this strange fancy that had possessed her; after a night’s sleep she would be herself again, and promised to him — to him. Yesterday, with its disarrangement of all things normal, was almost a forgotten illusion.

Always, in the past months, when she had run down the stairs to meet him, her heart had leaped at the sight of his face. Now, as she came into his presence, she felt her heart fall down, as with an actual sense of physical pain, at the instant her eyes met his. She hesitated, and stood trembling for a moment, as he sprang toward her, and then, as if they had not parted since the question had risen between them, the day before, she began to speak as if thinking aloud, slowly: —

“There seem to be so many times in life when the facts of a matter all lie one way, and the truth lies all the other way. The fact is, that you seem to yourself and possibly to the world in general, I do not know — to have acted the part of an honorable and considerate man. But the truth I do know, because I feel it here, oh, so deeply,”—and her two cold hands clutched together over her heart,— “I know that no man whose feeling for honor is as fine and sensitive as it should be could have treated a woman who loved him as you treated her.”

The words came out almost automatically. There was no conscious effort of her mind; it was the distillation of her overflowing heart. To the man, at first, it seemed that the dreadful illusion was persisting, and that presently it would pass. But instead, he presently perceived that all this was very reality.

He strove for words, and uttered a commonplace.

“Is this all that your night’s sleep has brought you ?” he asked.

“I have not slept at all,” she said quietly. “I have thought of nothing else, and I always come back to this.” Her voice drooped, with the dejection of her weary head, and her pallor wrung his heart. He moved to take her hand, and she drew back.

“Please” — she said. “You told me, yesterday, that I was a child. I am old and grave, since last night. I have thought, and thought, and thought, and I see but one thing, all the time — that you are not the man you seemed to me yesterday. And since it is I who have made a mistake” —

Arthur’s voice broke in, hoarse and shaky.

“Mildred!” he said, “do you mean that you are sending me away?”

“There is nothing else to do,” she said simply. “We were never really together, and we have just found it out, that is all.”

“Does our love for each other count for nothing ? ” he cried.

“ It does not count for enough to live on, without the other,” she replied drearily. “With me, love would not last without a foundation of utter trust. The difference in our ideas, in our points of view, is so fundamental that we should only make misery for both of us, if we tried to live together. And besides, I do not want to marry you, now, for my ideal has turned out to be a ghost, and I can’t marry a ghost.”

He caught at the word.

“Your own fancy creates the ghost, Mildred,” he said. “I am just the same man I was yesterday — you are just the same woman. We loved each other then — we love each other now. Oh, don’t let a girlish whim break up our lives — don’t see a ghost in place of the real man who loves you and wants you for his wife!”

Mildred covered her face with her hands. The strength and passion of the man shook the woman, and she felt herself swayed like a slender tree in a storm. But never once did her purpose quiver at its root, even in the greatest stress, in which, for the first time, she felt the call of his sex for hers. And then, growing and enveloping her like deep silence after a tumult of sound, came to her the sense that now, at last, she was submitting to some mysterious power, and that all the growth of her love for him had been but the preparation for this moment of bitter sacrifice. And while she made the sharp decision, as though plunging the knife into her breast, she entered into the great peace of obedience to an uncomprehended yet eternal law. As the instant passed, she perceived that she was calm, calmer than ever in her life before, since the childhood day of her first communion.

She raised her head and looked deep into his eyes.

“ I am not mistaken, now, Arthur,” she said in a low voice. “ It is ended, now. I dare not marry you. We have no common ground in life to stand on.”

Arthur stood staring at her helplessly for a moment.

“Mildred,” he said, “I cannot understand it all. I think you must have taken leave of your senses.”

“I wish I had,” answered the girl quietly, “but I have not. It is all clear and simple enough to me, and since you say you do not understand it, I will try once more to make it plain to you. I suppose I am only a young girl, as you say, and I do not know much of the world, and above all, I am not versed in that code which men have built up for themselves under the name of honor! ” — here her voice wavered —“but there are some things that stand out clear as noonday, to me. You have told me of your behavior toward another woman whom you once thought you loved — told me quite frankly, with no conception of the dishonor involved, of a course of treatment which I cannot believe it possible that any man should look upon except with contempt, or any woman condone. I can see that, occasionally, a man may find himself mistaken in his professed love for a woman. Women make such mistakes, too, sometimes. But that he should deliberately shift the responsibility of breaking the promise to the slighter shoulders of the woman,—that he should set himself to torture and ill - use the love she gives him” —*

“‘Torture and ill-use!’” he broke in. “I was trving to save her dignity—her self-respect!”

The girl thrust aside his words with a look and a gesture, and went on.

“That he can do anything, under the circumstances, but go and tell her the truth in tenderness, since it cannot be in love, — oh, it is incredible and monstrous to me, and such a man I can neither respect nor trust. And I believe that every woman in the world would agree with me! ”

Mildred stood upright, now, with stern eyes turned upon the man she loved and judged.

“But think of the girl’s pride, Mildred,” he pleaded, in bewilderment and despair. “How could a man choose to humiliate her so before the world, as he would in refusing to marry her?”

“Humiliate her!” Mildred returned bitterly. “There is no humiliation! She, at least, had kept her love burning clear, — she had been true to her promise! For myself, so far from being humiliated, I should glory — yes,glory — in the thought that it was not I who had failed in loyalty —in love! Where the deep spiritual things of life are concerned, what does a woman care for what the world thinks or says? Not one straw!”

The man hardly waited for her to finish. His self-control left him entirely, and he flamed up in accusation.

“You are morbid!” he declared, “and you sit here in your little world judging matters you are not able to judge. You have no right to pass such judgment on me. I offer you all a good man can offer a woman, and you say you love me, yet for a cobweb of sentiment between us you break your promise to me. I suppose you feel that you have done your duty. I can tell you that you have lost the substance for the shadow. I find that I know little enough of women, but you have taught me, to-day, how recklessly cruel a woman can be.”

The girl’s face was white, and turned proudly away from him.

“Now I am going,” he went on. “You forbid me to come back — you say you dare not marry such a man as I. Oh, Mildred, the woman I loved was not like the woman you are now. Indeed, I think any man might well hesitate in the attempt to meet your ideals. But we have got beyond discussion now.”

“ Yes,” she answered, “we have got beyond discussion now.”

She heard the house door close behind him, and then, as she found a chair, she felt everything slipping away from her. When she came back to herself, half an hour later, she stumbled a little as she rose and left the quiet old clock and the failing fire, and went to her room to begin the world all over again.