t at herself as she thought of it. How odd it
was! Her privacy had been invaded. The even tenor of her life had been
broken. Henceforth would she be less or more sensitive to the suggestion
of love, to the allurements of ambition? Margaret tried, in accordance
with her nature, to be sincere with herself.

After all, what nonsense it was! Nothing really had happened. A stranger
of a few weeks before had declared himself. She did not love him; he
was no more to her than any other man. It was a common occurrence. Her
judgment accorded with her feeling in what she had done. How was she to
know that she had made a mistake, if mistake it was? How was she to know
that this hour was a crisis in her life? Surely the little tumult would
pass; surely the little whisper of worldliness could not disturb her
ideals. But all the power of exclusion in her mind could not exclude the
returning thought of what might have been if she had loved him. Alas! in
that moment was born in her heart something that would make the idea of
love less simple than it had been in her mind. She was heart-free,
but her nature was too deep not to be profoundly affected by this
experience.

Looking back upon this afternoon in the light of after-years, she
probably could not feel--no one could say--that she had done wrong. How
was she to tell? Why is it that to do the right thing is often to make
the mistake of a life? Nothing could have been nobler than for Margaret
indignantly to put aside a temptation that her heart told her was
unworthy. And yet if she had yielded to it?

I ought to ask pardon, perhaps, for dwelling upon a thing so slight as
the entrance of a thought in a woman's life. For as to Margaret, she
seemed unchanged. She made no sign that anything unusual had occurred.
We only knew that Mr. Lyon went away less cheerful than he usually was,
that he said nothing of returning in response to our invitations, and
that he seemed to anticipate nothing but the fulfillment of a duty in
his visit to Washington.

What had happened was regarded as only an episode. In fact, however, I
doubt if there are any episodes in our lives, any asides, that do not
permanently affect our entire career. Are not the episodes, the casual
thoughts, the fortuitous, unplanned meetings, the brief and maybe at the
moment unnoted events, those which exercise the most influence on our
destiny? To all observation the career of Lyon, and not of Margaret, was
most affected by the