oundary is that lies between the things we understand and those
that are yet to be understood.

For some moments--or was it hours?--Northrup was not conscious of time
or place; not even conscious of himself as a body; he seemed to be a
condition, over which a contest of emotions swept. He was not asleep.
He recalled later, that he had kept his eyes on the fire; had once
attended to it, casting on a heavy log that dimmed its ferocious
ardour.

Where Jan-an had recently sat, struggling with her doubts and fears,
Mary-Clare seemed to be. And yet it was not so much Mary-Clare,
visually imagined, as that which had gone into the making of the
woman.

The black, fierce night of her birth; her isolated up-bringing with a
man whose mentality had overpowered his wisdom; the contact with Larry
Rivers; the forced marriage and the determined effort to live up to a
bargain made in the dark, endured in the dark. It came to Northrup,
drifting as he was, that a man or woman can go through slime and
torment and really escape harm. The old, fiery furnace legend was
based on an eternal truth; that and the lions' den! It put a new light
on that peculiar quality of Mary-Clare. She had never been burnt or
wounded--not the real woman of her. That explained the maddening thing
about her--her aloofness. What would she be now when she stood alone?
For she was going to stand alone! Then Northrup felt new sensations
driving across that state which really was himself shorn of prejudice
and limitations. His relation to Mary-Clare was changed!

There were primitive forces battling for expression in his lax hour.
Setting the woman free from bondage--what for?

That was the world-old call. Not free for herself, but free that
another might claim her. He, sitting there, wanted her. She had not
altered that by her heroism. Who would help her free herself, for
herself? Who would cut her loose and make no claims? Would it be
possible to help her and not put her under obligation? Could any one
trust a higher Power and go one's way unasking, refusing everything?
Was there such a thing as freedom for a woman when two men were so
welded into her life?

Northrup set his teeth hard together. In the stillness he had his
fight! And just then a shuffling outside brought him back to reality.

Rivers came in, not noticing the unlocked door; he had been drinking.
Northrup's eyes, accustomed to the gloom, marked his unsteady gait;
smiled as Larry, unconscious of