ty to your conception of what you owe humanity conflict in the
slightest. Marriage may take away the leisure that you have now. Few
women have the time to give to a public cause what I am giving. It is
only of late years that I have had it myself. But a torch is a torch, no
matter where you put it, and sometimes the lights streaming from
cheerful home windows make better guides for the benighted traveller
than the street lamp, whose sole purpose is to give itself to the
public."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," said Mary slowly, looking out of
the window in order to keep her face averted. "Maybe you're right, but
it's too late for me to take your point of view, much as I'd like to. I
wrote to Phil a week ago, and sent back his ring, and I made it so clear
that it was a matter of conscience with me, that I'm very sure that I
convinced him that I was doing the right thing. At any rate, there has
been plenty of time for a reply, and I haven't had a word. 'Silence
gives consent,' you know."

She spoke drearily and kept on looking out of the window so long that
Mrs. Blythe was sure that her eyes were full of tears which she wanted
to hide. So she rose briskly, saying, as if the matter were ended:

"Well, at any rate, come on and let's have our walk. We can tramp out to
the Turnpike Inn and come back by trolley before dark if we start
immediately."

All the way out and back Mrs. Blythe could see what an effort Mary was
making to appear interested in the conversation, but she knew by
intuition that her thoughts were not on the people and places they
passed. Each way she turned she was seeing, not the bare February
landscape, but the handsome, laughing face she was trying so hard to put
out of her memory. It was doubly hard now that Mrs. Blythe had
pronounced her renunciation of it unnecessary. The more Mary thought
about it, the more reasonable Mrs. Blythe's viewpoint seemed. It was
true that Dudley Blythe's position in the professional world gave his
wife a certain prestige with many people, and her words a weight they
would not have had otherwise, despite her own personal charm and
ability. And his hearty endorsement and cooeperation was her strongest
support.

"Maybe Mrs. Blythe was right," thought Mary. Maybe giving herself to
Phil wouldn't be looking back from the "plough" to which she had
consecrated herself. Maybe it would only be giving it a strong, guiding
hand. She certainly needed it herself, judging fro