them both from the hearth, offering
her cheerful young defiance for their approval.

Their silence, their gravity, startled the girl. She looked from one
face to the other in quick scrutiny. What did this mean? For perhaps
the first time in her life, it flashed through her mind that, after
all, she knew nothing of the inner attitude of these two people, whom
she greatly loved, toward the two facts which had made them all one
household--her mother's divorce, namely, and her father's remarriage.
The whole structure of three united, happy lives was built upon these
cataclysmal facts--yet she had never asked what thought they held of
them! Dignified, delicate, scrupulous, she {164} knew them both to be.
Through what anguish and uncertainty might they not have passed before
they clasped hands at last, making of their two hearts a shelter for
her robbed, defenseless one?

Her manner changed on the instant.

"Dear family, you don't _want_ me to go? Surely--why--you _can't_ want
me to go?"

"No," said Evelyn in a low voice, "dearest, no. Certainly we don't
want you to go. Only--"

"But my work!" cried Marvel, passionately, answering their faces, not
their words. "I want to do it so much! How can I possibly leave my
work? And you, and my life here--everything!"

Her father turned his face farther toward the window, looking out
blindly, but Marvel caught his expression--the {165} look of one who
tastes again an ancient bitterness. She did not know its full meaning,
but her sympathy leaped to meet it. Evelyn Charleroy, watching her,
felt a sudden stirring of pride in the girl's swift response to
another's need, her quick tenderness. It was thus that Evelyn saw the
life of woman--as one long opportunity for the exercise of these
qualities.

"Darlingest father, of course I'm not going to leave you. Still, if I
were--what is mother like? What does she expect? What am I to do if I
go to her?"

"She is a brilliant woman," answered Professor Charleroy. "In many
ways you are not unlike her, Marvel, in mental alertness and all that.
As for what she expects--God knows!"

The girl pursued her point. "It is n't an occupation--to be a
brilliant {166} woman. I'm not quite sure, even, what she does. She
lectures? She is philanthropic, or humanitarian, or something like
that? Does she write?"

"No," answered the professor, choosing his words with evident and
conscientious care. "That is not her gift. She has the endowment of
convi