now turned and came close to
Aunt Polly, resting her folded arms on the thin little knees--"It has
come to me, dear, that things are not fixed right and when they are
not, it won't do any good to keep on acting as if they were. Being
married to Larry could never make it right for me to do what seems to
me wrong. And oh! Aunt Polly, I wish that I could make you understand.
Do try to understand, dear, there is a sacred place in my soul, and I
just do believe it is in all women's souls if they dared to say
so--that no one, not even a husband, has a right to claim. It is hers
and--God's. But men don't know, and some don't care--and they just
rush along and take and take, never counting what it may cost--and
they make laws to help them when they might fail without, and--well,
Aunt Polly, it is hard to stand all alone in the world. I think the
really happy women are those who don't know what I mean, or those that
have loved enough, loved a man true enough--to share that sacred place
with him--the place he ought not ask for or have a law for. I know you
do not understand, Aunt Polly. I did not myself until Peneluna told
me."

At this Aunt Polly braced against the pillows as if they were rocks.

"Peneluna!" she gasped.

"Let me tell you, Aunt Polly. It is such a wonderful thing."

As she might have spoken to Noreen, so Mary-Clare spoke now to the
woman who had only viewed life as Moses had the Promised Land, from
her high mount.

"And so, can you not see, dear Aunt Polly, it isn't a thing that laws
can touch; it isn't being good or bad--it is too big a Thing to call
by name. Peneluna could starve and still keep it. She could be lonely
and serve, but she _knew_. I don't love Larry, I cannot help it. All
my life I am going to keep all of the promise I can, Aunt Polly, but
I'm going to--to keep myself, too! A woman can give a man a good
deal--but she can't give him some things if she tries to! Look at the
women; some of them in the Forest. Aunt Polly, if marriage means what
they look like----" Mary-Clare shuddered.

Aunt Polly had suddenly grown tender and far-seeing. She let go the
sounding words that Church and State had taught her.

"Little girl," she said, and all her motherhood rushed forward to
seize, as it had ever done, those "scraps" of others' lives, "suppose
the time should come when there would be in your life another--someone
besides Larry? Why has all this come so sudden to you?"

Northrup seemed to loom i