Thus spoke Sweet and Twenty, glowing. And Sweet and Forty, meeting
that flame with her banked fires, faltered. "But, my dear, how can you
know?"

"How did you know?"

The abrupt question drove every drop of blood from Aunt Isabelle's
face. "Who told you?"

"Mother. One night when I asked her why you had never married. You
don't mind, do you?"

Aunt Isabelle shook her head. "No. And, Mary, dear, I've faced all
the loneliness, all the dependence, rather than be untrue to that which
he gave me and I gave him. There was one night, in this old garden. I
was visiting your mother, and he was in Congress at the time, and the
garden was full of roses--and it was--moonlight. And we sat by the
fountain, and there was the soft splash of the water, and he said:
'Isabelle, the little bronze boy is throwing kisses at you--do you see
him--smiling?' And I said, 'I want no kisses but yours'--and that was
the last time. The next day he was killed--thrown from his horse while
he was riding out here to see--me.

"It was after that I was so ill. And something teemed to snap in my
head, and one day when I sat beside the fountain I found that I
couldn't hear the splash of the water, and things began to go; the
voices I loved seemed far away, and I could tell that the wind was
blowing only by the movement of the leaves, and the birds rounded out
their little throats--but I heard--no music----"

Her voice trailed away into silence.

"But before the stillness, there were others who--wanted me--for I
hadn't lost my prettiness, and Frances did her best for me. And she
didn't like it when I said I couldn't marry, Mary. But now I am glad.
For in the silence, my love and I live, in a world of our own."

"Aunt Isabelle--darling. How lovely and sweet, and sad----" Mary was
kneeling beside her aunt, her arm thrown around her, and Aunt Isabelle,
reading her lips, did not need to hear the words.

"If I had been strong, like you, Mary, I could have held my own against
Frances and have made something of myself. But I'm not strong, and
twenty-five years ago women did not ask for freedom. They asked
for--love."

"But I want to find freedom in my love. Not be bound as Porter wants
to bind me. He'd put me on a pedestal and worship me, and I'd rather
stand shoulder to shoulder with my husband and be his comrade. I don't
want him to look up too far, or to look down as Gordon looks down on
Constance."

"Looks down? Why, he ado