gures painted on
air, but as distinct, impersonal, and final as a geometrical problem.
She was one of those women who are called "sensible" by their
acquaintances--meaning that they are born already disciplined and
confirmed in the quieter and more orderly processes of life. Her natural
intelligence having overcome the defects of her education, she thought
not vaguely, but with clearness and precision, and something of this
clearness and precision was revealed in her manner and in her
appearance, as if she had escaped at twenty years from the impulsive
judgments and the troublous solicitudes of youth. At forty, she would
probably begin to grow young again, and at fifty, it is not unlikely
that she would turn her back upon old age forever. Just now she was too
tremendously earnest about life, which she treated quite in the large
manner, to take a serious interest in living.

"Promise me, Jinny, that you'll never let anybody take my place," she
said, turning when they had reached the head of the steps.

"You silly Susan! Why, of course, they shan't," replied Virginia, and
they kissed ecstatically.

"Nobody will ever love you as I do."

"And I you, darling."

With arms interlaced they stood gazing down into the street, where the
shadow of the old lamplighter glided like a ghost under the row of pale
flickering lights. From a honeysuckle-trellis on the other side of the
porch, a penetrating sweetness came in breaths, now rising, now dying
away. In Virginia's heart, Love stirred suddenly, and blind, wingless,
imprisoned, struggled for freedom.

"It is late, I must be going," said Susan. "I wish we lived nearer each
other."

"Isn't it too dark for you to go alone? John Henry will stop on his way
from work, and he'll take you--if you really won't stay to supper."

"No, I don't mind in the least going by myself. It isn't night, anyway,
and people are sitting out on their porches."

A minute afterwards they parted, Susan going swiftly down High Street,
while Virginia went back along the path to the porch, and passing under
the paulownias, stopped beside the honeysuckle-trellis, which extended
to the ruined kitchen garden at the rear of the house. Once vegetables
were grown here, but except for a square bed of mint which spread
hardily beneath the back windows of the dining-room, the place was left
now a prey to such barbarian invaders as burdock and moth mullein. On
the brow of the hill, where the garden ended, there