favours, or fears of dismissal; we'll all be equal and free."

She did not answer that, at once; and I had an unpleasant feeling that she
was testing my quality by some criterion of her own, weighing the
genuineness of my emotion.

"Did you feel like this about things this afternoon?" she asked, after
what seemed to me an immense interval.

I was determined to tell her nothing less than the truth. "No," I
confessed, "much of it was a result of what you said to me. I--I had an
illumination. You made me see what a poor thing my life had been; how
conventional, artificial, worthless, it was. What you said about my plays
was so true. I had never realised it before--I hadn't bothered to think
about it."

"I don't remember saying anything about your plays," she interrupted me.

"Oh! you did," I assured her; "very little; nothing directly; but I knew
what you felt, and when I came to think it over, I agreed with you."

"I've only seen _one_," she remarked.

"They're all the same," I assured her, becoming fervent in my humility.

"But why go to Canada?" she asked. "Why not try to write better plays?"

"Because I saw my whole life plainly, in the wood this afternoon," was my
reply. "I did not know what to do then. I couldn't see any answer to my
problem. But when you were speaking to me a minute ago, I realised the
whole thing clearly. I understood what I wanted to do.

"It's a form of conversion," I concluded resolutely.

"I'm sure you mean it all--now," she commented, as if she were speaking to
herself.

"It isn't a question of _meaning_ anything," I replied. "The experiences
of this week-end have put the whole social question in a new light for me.
I could never go back, now, to the old life. My conscience would always be
reproaching me, if I did."

"But if you're rich, and feel like that, oughn't you to shoulder your
responsibilities?" she asked.

"Do something? Wouldn't it be rather like running away to give your money
to the hospitals and go to Canada to work on a farm?"

"That's my present impulse," I said. "And I mean to follow it. I don't
know that I shall want to stay in Canada for the rest of my life. I may
see further developments after I've been there for a few years. But..."

"Go on," she urged me.

"But I want to--to stay near you--all of you. I can't tell you how I
admire your father and mother and Arthur and--all of you. And you see, I
admit that this conversion of mine has been very sudden.