nine frivolities. But Maria had meant to show them that a
woman could really love and marry, and preserve her own dignity. She
tried to find her footing now.

"Come into the summer-house, John. I should think our friendship would
bear any strain, for it does not depend on external ties."

"No, that's true. Now, as to your phalansteries and women's clubs and
sitz-baths, why that's all flummery to me. But young women must have
their whims until they have husbands to occupy their minds, I suppose.
There's that little girl at the Book-shop: how many leagues of tatting
do you suppose she makes in a year?"

"I really cannot say," sharply.

"But as to our friendship, Maria--"

"Yes. There may be a lack of external bonds" (speaking deliberately,
for she wanted to remember this crisis of her life as accurate in all
its minutiae); "but there is a primal unity, a mysterious sympathy, in
power and emotion. At least, so it seems to me," suddenly stammering
and picking up Hero to avoid looking at McCall, who stood in front of
her.

"I don't know. Primal unities are rather hazy to me. I can tell by a
woman's eye and hand-shake if she is pure-minded and sweet-tempered,
and pretty well, too, what she thinks of me. That's about as far as I
go."

"It pleases you to wear this mask of dullness, I know," with an
indulgent smile, with which Titania might have fondled the ass's head.

"But as to our friendship," gravely, "I feel I've hardly been fair
to you. Friendship demands candor, and there is one matter on which I
have not dealt plainly with you. You have been an honest, firm friend
to me, Maria. I had no right to withhold my confidence from you."

If Miss Muller had not been known as an advanced philosopher, basing
her life upon the Central Truths, she would have gained some credit
as a shrewd woman of business. "What do you mean, John?" she said,
turning a cool I steady countenance toward him.

"Sit down and I will tell you what I mean."

* * * * *

The patients, taking soon after their two hours' exercise, made their
jokes on the battle between the two systems, seeing the allopathist
McCall and Doctor Maria Haynes Muller in the summer-house engaged in
such long and earnest converse. Homoeopathy, they guessed, had the
worst of it, for the lady was visibly agitated and McCall apparently
unmoved. Indeed, when he left her and crossed the garden, nodding to
such of them as he knew, he had a sati