l that he really had to say, just that last sentence,
though for more than an hour they discussed themselves and their
uncharted world, Walter trying to be honest, yet to leave with her a
better impression of himself; Una trying to keep him with her. It was
hard for her to understand that Walter really meant all he said.

But, like him, she was frank.

There are times in any perplexed love when the lovers revel in bringing
out just those problems and demands and complaints which they have most
carefully concealed. At such a time of mutual confession, if the lovers
are honest and tender, there is none of the abrasive hostility of a
vulgar quarrel. But the kindliness of the review need not imply that it
is profitable; often it ends, as it began, with the wail, "What can we
do?" But so much alike are all the tribe of lovers, that the debaters
never fail to stop now and then to congratulate themselves on being so
frank!

Thus Una and Walter, after a careful survey of the facts that he was too
restless, that she was too Panamanian and too much mothered, after much
argument as to what he had meant when he had said this, and what she had
thought he meant when he had said that, and whether he could ever have
been so inconsiderate as to have said the other, and frequent admiration
of themselves for their open-mindedness, the questing lovers were of the
same purpose as at the beginning of their inquiry. He still felt the
urge to take up his pilgrimage again, to let the "decent job" and Omaha
carry him another stage in his search for the shrouded gods of his
nebulous faith. And she still begged for a chance to love, to be needed;
still declared that he was merely running away from himself.

They had quite talked themselves out before he sighed: "I don't dare to
look and see what time it is. Come, we'll have to go."

They swung arms together shyly as they stumbled back over the path. She
couldn't believe that he really would go off to the West, of which she
was so ignorant. But she felt as though she were staggering into a
darkness blinder and ever more blind.

When she got home she found her mother awake, very angry over Una's
staying out till after midnight, and very wordy about the fact that
"that nice, clean young man," Mr. J. J. Todd, of Chatham and of the
commercial college, had come to call that evening. Una made little
answer to her. Through her still and sacred agony she could scarce hear
her mother's petulant whinin