"And _I_ hope he _will_," the girl said, and confronted her mother with
a stormy exaltation that would have frightened any creature less
unimpressionable than a cat.

Her mother rocked herself again for an interval of cogitation. What she
arrived at in speech was: "Well, I guess you've done a wicked thing,
Editha Balcom."

The girl said, as she passed indoors through the same window her mother
had come out by: "I haven't done anything--yet."

* * * * *

In her room, she put together all her letters and gifts from Gearson,
down to the withered petals of the first flower he had offered, with
that timidity of his veiled in that irony of his. In the heart of the
packet she enshrined her engagement ring which she had restored to the
pretty box he had brought it her in. Then she sat down, if not calmly
yet strongly, and wrote:

"GEORGE:--I understood when you left me. But I think we had better
emphasize your meaning that if we cannot be one in everything we
had better be one in nothing. So I am sending these things for your
keeping till you have made up your mind.

"I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never marry any one
else. But the man I marry must love his country first of all, and
be able to say to me,