chael's Basin.

One evening she sat before the fire thinking of Philip. Her grandfather
had retired earlier than usual. Biribi lay asleep on the veille. There
was no sound save the ticking of the clock on the mantel above her head,
the dog's slow breathing, the snapping of the log on the fire, and a
soft rush of heat up the chimney. The words of Philip's letters, from
which she had extracted every atom of tenderness they held, were always
in her ears. At last one phrase kept repeating itself to her like some
plaintive refrain, torturing in its mournful suggestion. It was this:
"But you see, beloved, though I am absent from you I shall have such
splendid chances to get on. There's no limit to what this war may do for
me."

Suddenly Guida realised how different was her love from Philip's, how
different her place in his life from his place in her life. She reasoned
with herself, because she knew that a man's life was work in the world,
and that work and ambition were in his bones and in his blood, had
been carried down to him through centuries of industrious, ambitious
generations of men: that men were one race and women were another. A man
was bound by the conditions governing the profession by which he earned
his bread and butter and played his part in the world, while striving
to reach the seats of honour in high places. He must either live by the
law, fulfil to the letter his daily duties in the business of life, or
drop out of the race; while a woman, in the presence of man's immoderate
ambition, with bitterness and tears, must learn to pray, "O Lord, have
mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law."

Suddenly the whole thing resolved itself in Guida's mind, and her
thinking came to a full stop. She understood now what was the right and
what the wrong; and, child as she was in years, woman in thought and
experience, yielding to the impulse of the moment, she buried her face
in her hands and burst into tears.

"O Philip, Philip, Philip," she sobbed aloud, "it was not right of you
to marry me; it was wicked of you to leave me!" Then in her mind she
carried on the impeachment and reproach. If he had married her openly
and left her at once, it would have been hard to bear, but in the
circumstances it might have been right. If he had married her secretly
and left her at the altar, so keeping the vow he had made her when she
promised to become his wife, that might have been pardonable. But to
marry her as he