a day of most distressing uncertainty. He tried to make up
his mind to accept with true philosophy whatever decision she was
bringing him. "Nan is a good girl," he told himself over and over
again; "she will try to do right." But she was so young and so
generous, and whether she had been implored to break the old ties of
home life and affection for her aunt's sake, or whether it was a newer
and stronger influence still which had prevailed, waited for
explanation. Alas, as was written once, it is often the higher nature
that yields, because it is the most generous. The doctor knew well
enough the young girl's character. He knew what promises of growth and
uncommon achievement were all ready to unfold themselves,--for what
great uses she was made. He could not bear the thought of her being
handicapped in the race she had been set to run. Yet no one recognized
more clearly than he the unseen, and too often unconsidered, factor
which is peculiar to each soul, which prevents any other intelligence
from putting itself exactly in that soul's place, so that our
decisions and aids and suggestions are never wholly sufficient or
available for those even whom we love most. He went over the question
again and again; he followed Nan in his thoughts as she had grown
up,--unprejudiced, unconstrained as is possible for any human being to
be. He remembered that her heroes were the great doctors, and that her
whole heart had been stirred and claimed by the noble duties and needs
of the great profession. She had been careless of the social
limitations, of the lack of sympathy, even of the ridicule of the
public. She had behaved as a bird would behave if it were assured by
beasts and fishes that to walk and to swim were the only proper and
respectable means of getting from place to place. She had shown such
rare insight into the principles of things; she had even seemed to
him, as he watched her, to have anticipated experience, and he could
not help believing that it was within her power to add much to the too
small fund of certainty, by the sure instinct and aim of her
experiment. It counted nothing whether God had put this soul into a
man's body or a woman's. He had known best, and He meant it to be the
teller of new truth, a revealer of laws, and an influence for good in
its capacity for teaching, as well as in its example of pure and
reasonable life.

But the old doctor sighed, and told himself that the girl was most
human, most affect