to the world itself, for example."

"For the stars up there, for grass and trees, for the moon by night and
the sun by day--for the gracious gift of friends?"

"A little, yes; but they don't count so much. I owe my debt to
people--real human beings, who may not be as lucky as I. For a good many
thousand years people have been at work trying to cheer up the
world--brighten it and make it a better place to live in. I owe all
those people something; it's not merely a little something; it's a
tremendous lot, and I must pay these other human beings who don't know
what they're entitled to. You have felt that; you have felt it just as I
have, I'm sure."

"You are still in college, and that is what undergraduates are taught to
call ideals, Miss Garrison. I hope you will hold on to them: I had mine,
but I'm conscious of late that I'm losing my grip on them. It's
inevitable, in a man's life. It's a good thing that women hold on to
them longer; without woman's faith in such things the world would be a
sad old cinder, tumbling aimlessly around in the void."

She stopped abruptly in the path, very tall and slim in the dusk of
starlight and moonlight. He had been carrying his hat in his hand and he
leaned on his stick wondering whether she were really in earnest,
whether he had displeased her by the half-mocking tone in which he had
spoken.

"Please don't talk this old, romantic, mediaeval nonsense about women!
This is the twentieth century, and I don't believe for a minute that a
woman, just by being a woman, can keep the world sweet and beautiful.
Once, maybe; but not any more! A woman's ideals aren't a bit better than
a man's unless she stands up for them and works for them. You don't have
to take that from a college senior; you can ask dear Mrs. Owen. I
suppose she knows life from experience if any woman ever did, and she
has held to her ideals and kept working away at them. But just being a
woman, and being good, and nice, and going to church, and belonging to a
missionary society--well, Mr. Harwood?"

She had changed from earnestness to a note of raillery.

"Yes, Miss Garrison," he replied in her own key; "if you expect me to
take issue with you or Mrs. Owen on any point, you're much mistaken. You
and she are rather fortunate over many of the rest of us in having both
brains and gentle hearts--the combination is irresistible! When you come
home to throw in your lot with that of about a quarter of a million of
us in our