began, in the tone that
seemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a reflection on it.

He answered with a discouraged gesture. "What was the use? We couldn't
have talked."

"Not as well as here," she assented; adding, after a meditative pause,
"As you didn't come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead."

"Ah!" he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach him
from the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was their
wont, into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One felt them to
be hands that, moving only to some purpose, were capable of intervals of
serene inaction.

"We had a long talk," Miss Trent went on; and she waited again before
adding, with the increased absence of stress that marked her graver
communications, "Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad with her."

Glennard looked up with a start. "Abroad? When?"

"Now--next month. To be gone two years."

He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. "Does she really?
Well, I want you to go abroad with ME--for any number of years. Which
offer do you accept?"

"Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration," she
returned, with a smile.

Glennard looked at her again. "You're not thinking of it?"

Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were so rare
that they might have been said to italicize her words. "Aunt Virginia
talked to me very seriously. It will be a great relief to mother and the
others to have me provided for in that way for two years. I must
think of that, you know." She glanced down at her gown which, under a
renovated surface, dated back to the first days of Glennard's wooing. "I
try not to cost much--but I do."

"Good Lord!" Glennard groaned.

They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. "As the
eldest, you know, I'm bound to consider these things. Women are such a
burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children to
provide for it isn't very much. You see, we're all poor together."

"Your aunt isn't. She might help your mother."

"She does--in her own way."

"Exactly--that's the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in
any way you like, but if you're to be happy you've got to be so in her
way--and in her old gowns."

"I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia's old gowns," Miss Trent
interposed.

"Abroad, you mean?"

"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will
help."

"Of course--I see that.