who have never earned, expect a joy to be
yours forever?"

"You have struggled and earned. You have the right to love me!"

"Perhaps--but you cannot hide behind my skirts and claim the same
right. I shall give you up. Why, this is no tragedy--it is the way
many commercial nuns find their lives are cast. Commercial nuns, like
their religious sisters, serve a novitiate--their vocation being
tested out. We who find that the things of our fancy are husks leave
them behind and go on in our abilities. We are needed women to-day; we
must have recognition and respect. We possess a certain unwomanly
honesty according to old standards, which makes us say such things as
I have said to you. I love you, the ideal of you; yet I am hopeless to
realize it. I refuse to keep on making my petty moan for sympathy when
all the time the bigger part of me demands work and contentment--and
things just like Gorgeous Girls."

"But there must be a way out. I can't lose you. Do you know what it
will mean?"

"I fancy I do." The gray eyes were so maternal that Steve felt
comforted.

"Are you pushing me out of a stagnant joy pool?" he tried saying
lightly.

"Perhaps I'm heading that way when I stop serving you before all
else."

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary"--he gave her a gentle little shake--"say
it all again. Then tell me if this is a mood and you'll change your
mind and stay. You must stay--or else you don't love me."

"Eternal masculine! That we love to be beaten, cry loudly, tell our
neighbours, but we must prove our affections by crawling back to have
you kiss the bruises." She shook her head. "You cannot believe that
the world recognizes a difference between women with sentiments and
sentimental women! Why, my boy, do you know that convictions, real
convictions, do make a convict of a man, put a mental ball and chain
on him which he can never deny? I have told you my convictions--I am
convinced I should be doing wrong to both of us to stay. I shall
go--and love my ideal and spend my salary in soothing things."

"I'm not afraid of a divorce," he found himself insisting.

"Nor I. But should you get one I would not marry you."

"Not ever?" he asked.

Unconsciously they both looked at the photograph of the Gorgeous Girl
smiling down on them in serene and frivolous fashion.

"Not ever," she told him, turning away.

There was a directors' meeting, which Steve was obliged to attend. He
knew he sat about a table smoking innumerable