inality
in the tone with which she declared,

"It's impossible."

Mrs. Quentin's answer veiled the least shade of feminine resentment. "I
told Alan that, where he had failed, there was no chance of my making
an impression."

Hope Fenno laid on her visitor's an almost reverential hand. "Dear Mrs.
Quentin, it's the impression you make that confirms the impossibility."

Mrs. Quentin waited a moment: she was perfectly aware that, where her
feelings were concerned, her sense of humor was not to be relied on.
"Do I make such an odious impression?" she asked at length, with a
smile that seemed to give the girl her choice of two meanings.

"You make such a beautiful one! It's too beautiful--it obscures my
judgment."

Mrs. Quentin looked at her thoughtfully. "Would it be permissible, I
wonder, for an older woman to suggest that, at your age, it isn't
always a misfortune to have what one calls one's judgment temporarily
obscured?"

Miss Fenno flushed. "I try not to judge others--"

"You judge Alan."

"Ah, _he_ is not others," she murmured, with an accent that touched the
older woman.

"You judge his mother."

"I don't; I don't!"

Mrs. Quentin pressed her point. "You judge yourself, then, as you would
be in my position--and your verdict condemns me."

"How can you think it? It's because I appreciate the difference in our
point of view that I find it so difficult to defend myself--"

"Against what?"

"The temptation to imagine that I might be as _you_ are--feeling as I
do."

Mrs. Quentin rose with a sigh. "My child, in my day love was less
subtle." She added, after a moment, "Alan is a perfect son."

"Ah, that again--that makes it worse!"

"Worse?"

"Just as your goodness does, your sweetness, your immense indulgence in
letting me discuss things with you in a way that must seem almost an
impertinence."

Mrs. Quentin's smile was not without irony. "You must remember that I
do it for Alan."

"That's what I love you for!" the girl instantly returned; and again
her tone touched her listener.

"And yet you're sacrificing him--and to an idea!"

"Isn't it to ideas that all the sacrifices that were worth while have
been made?"

"One may sacrifice one's self."

Miss Fenno's color rose. "That's what I'm doing," she said gently.

Mrs. Quentin took her hand. "I believe you are," she answered. "And it
isn't true that I speak only for Alan. Perhaps I did when I began; but
now I want to plead for you too--aga