"I don't really know," she said, laughing hurriedly. "I don't
really."

Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:

"Well--!"

To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her
periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she
certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible
outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could
have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not
understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never
existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost
non-sensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.

And then, most irritating, a complete _volte face_ in her feelings.
The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to
disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed
large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had
dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force
that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was
the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander
overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt
herself going distracted--she felt she was going out of her mind.
For she could not act.

Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:

"Well, of course, you'll do as you think best. There's a great risk
in going so far--a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected."

"I don't mind being unprotected," said Alvina perversely.

"Because you don't understand what it means," said her father.

He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the
others.

"Personally," said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, "I don't
care for him. But every one has their own taste."

Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting
herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle
into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had
frightened her.

Miss Frost now took a definite line.

"I feel you don't love him, dear. I'm almost sure you don't. So now
you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going--she dreads it. I
am certain you would never see her again. She says she can't bear
it--she can't bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It
makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will
have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best."

Alvina was made