up short. Wallowing again! No more of that. She'd
leave March alone, and on that resolution she'd stop thinking about him.
She'd think about Rush and Graham and the farm.

Graham! They didn't come, Rush had said, any whiter than that. Probably
he was right about it. It was a wonderful quality, that sort of
whiteness. What was it he had done (she didn't even remember!) that had
caused him such bitter self-reproach? You couldn't help liking him. It
ought not to be hard to fall sufficiently in love with him. And out on a
farm... A farmer's wife certainly had enough to do to keep her from
growing restless. With a lot of children, four to half a dozen,--no one
could call that a worthless life.

And it was practicable. With an even break in the luck, she could
accomplish the whole of it. A man like Graham she could make happy. Her
one gift would be enough for him; all he'd want. What was it he had told
Rush to-night? That he had always thought her the most perfect...

At that, appallingly, she was seized in the cold grip of an unforeseen
realization. She couldn't marry a boy like that--she couldn't marry any
man who regarded her like that--without first telling him what she was;
what she was not! She would have to make clear to him--there was simply
no escape from that--the nature of the thing that had happened in that
tiny flat in New York where she had lived alone so long.

It was possible, of course, oh, more than that, probable even, that after
hearing the story he would still want to marry her. That he might regard
her, no matter what she said, as having been wronged; her innocence,
though once taken advantage of by a scoundrel, intact. His love would be
reenforced by pity. He'd think of nothing, in the stress of that moment,
but the desire to protect her, to provide a fortress for her.

But would she dare, on these terms, marry him, or any other man for that
matter, no matter how ardently he professed forgiveness? It wouldn't be
until after the marriage was an accomplished thing, its first desires
satisfied, its first tension relaxed, that the story of her adventure
would begin to loom black and thunderous over the horizon of his mind.
(Who was the man? How could it have happened? In what mood of madness
could she have done such a thing? Might it ever,--when might it
not--happen again?) No! Marriage was difficult enough without being
handicapped additionally by a perennial misgiving like that. No
thoroughfare again!