st up suddenly over Sylvia's face, but
she could not withdraw her eyes from her mother's searching, honest
gaze, which, even more than her words, spoke to the girl's soul. The
strong, grave voice went on unhesitatingly. For once in her life
Mrs. Marshall was speaking out. She was like one who welcomes the
opportunity to make a confession of faith. "There's no healthy life
possible without some sensual feeling between the husband and wife,
but there's nothing in the world more awful than married life when
it's the only common ground."

Sylvia gazed with wide eyes at the older woman's face, ardent,
compelling, inspired, feeling too deeply, to realize it wholly,
the vital and momentous character of the moment. She seemed to see
nothing, to be aware of nothing but her mother's heroic eyes of truth;
but the whole scene was printed on her mind for all her life--the
hard, brown road they stood on, the grayed old rail-fence back of Mrs.
Marshall, a field of brown stubble, a distant grove of beech-trees,
and beyond and around them the immense sweeping circle of the horizon.
The very breath of the pure, scentless winter air was to come back to
her nostrils in after years.

"Sylvia," her mother went on, "it is one of the responsibilities of
men and women to help each other to meet on a high plane and not on
a low one. And on the whole--health's the rule of the world--on
the whole, that's the way the larger number of husbands and wives,
imperfect as they are, do live together. Family life wouldn't be
possible a day if they didn't."

Like a strong and beneficent magician, she built up again and
illuminated Sylvia's black and shattered world. "Your father is just
as pure a man as I am a woman, and I would be ashamed to look any
child of mine in the face if he were not. You know no men who are not
decent--except two--and those you did not meet in your parents' home."

For the first time she moved from her commanding attitude of prophetic
dignity. She came closer to Sylvia, but although she looked at her
with a sudden sweetness which affected Sylvia like a caress, she but
made one more impersonal statement: "Sylvia dear, don't let anything
make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as
women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you
know that--and it's true." Apparently she had said all she had to say,
for she now kissed Sylvia gently and began again to walk forward.

The sun had comp