ed the man almost angrily. "Abandon you to all
this abysmal bigotry and--to this pharisaical web of ugly dogmas!
Conscience, you're falling into a melancholy morbidness."

As she looked at him and saw the old smoldering fire in his eyes that
reminded her of his boyhood, a pathetic smile twisted the corners of her
lips.

"Yes--I guess that's just it, Stuart," she said slowly, "You see, I may
have to stay here until, as you put it, I'm all faded out in the fog. If
I've changed so much already there's no telling what years of it will
turn me into."

Stuart Farquaharson caught her impulsively in his arms and his words
came in tumultuous fervor.

"What I said wasn't criticism," he declared. "God knows I couldn't
criticize you. You ought to know that. This is the nearest we've ever
come to a quarrel, dear, since the Barbara Freitchie days, and it's
closer than I want to come. Besides, it's not just your laughter that I
love. It's all of you: heart, mind, body: the whole lovely trinity of
yourself. I mean to wage unabated war against all these forces that are
trying to stifle your laughter into the pious smirk of the pharisee.
There's more of what God wants the world to feel in one peal of your
laughter than in all the psalms that this whole people ever whined
through their noses. You're one of the rare few who can go through life
being yourself--not just a copy and reflection of others. A hundred
years ago your own people would probably have burned you as a witch for
that. They've discontinued that form of worship now, but the cut of
their moral and intellectual jib is, in some essentials, the same. Thank
God, you have a different pattern of soul and I want you to keep it."

She drew away from him and slowly her face cleared of its misery and the
eyes flashed into their old mischief-loving twinkle. "That's the first
real rise I've had out of you," she declared, "since Barbara waved the
stars and stripes at you. Then you were only defending Virginia, but now
you've assumed the offensive against all New England."

But even in that mild disagreement they had, as he said, come nearer
than either liked to a quarrel--and neither could quite forget it. Both
felt that the thin edge of what might have been a disrupting wedge had
threatened their complete harmony.

Because he could mark the transition of this thing called conscience
into an obsession, and because he, too, was worn in patience and
stinging with resentment agains