"There's no use in my trying to please you," he heard the voice say, as
he started up the strip of gravel. "You find fault with everything I
do; you interfere with my rights--"

There came the low murmur of another voice. Then,--

"Rights? My rights to rule my life according to my own beliefs. My
rights to seek the Universal Truth. I have my way to go, as you say you
have yours. The two ways can never be the same. I have tried my best to
make them so; but it is no use."

Again the murmur.

"And my best to live up to my share of a bad bargain," came the brutal
answer. "My best to--" The voice choked with its own emotions.

"Tut! Tut!" Dolph remarked softly, at the invisible owner of the voice.
"Steady, now; or you'll be crying, next thing you know."

His warning, though, was needless. No trace of tears came into the
militant reply to the next low words.

"Yes, a bad, bad bargain. When we came together, I dreamed of a perfect
union, a life of mutual opportunity. Oh, yes, I know. You say it's all
on account of my beliefs, all because I have strayed away from the
chalkline you marked out for me. But who else has strayed? Who else has
thrown over his earlier creed? And you have thrown with it all belief
in anything, tossed it aside as if it had been a worn-out rag. I have
laid it aside, unharmed, and chosen out another creed of finer texture.
And now you think I am going to stay here, inert, supine, and watch you
tear that creed apart. Never!"

"Grand language, that," Dolph soliloquized, as he mounted the steps and
came into hearing of the words. "Evidently, it's not the cook; she
wouldn't be up to that level."

"Your fault? Whose fault, else? Who first took pains to teach me that
the old creed of our parents was unbelievable? Who put the first
questionings into my young mind? Who waked me from my mental sleep? It
was you, yourself. Without you, I never should have known the peace
which now I feel. For so much, I am grateful to you, Scott Brenton."

On the final sentences, the angry voice had lowered its pitch a little,
as if to come into some slight consonance with the peace of which it
boasted. The different cadence, coupled with the unexpected use of
Brenton's given name, brought light to Dolph Dennison.

"Damn!" he remarked succinctly, letting go the knocker with which he
had been hoping to put an end to the discussion. "It's Mrs. Brenton!"

And then, obedient to the town-wide impulse which never failed t