Sipping her tea slowly, she turned the subject over and over in her
mind, seeking some ground on which to agree with him.

She did this the more conscientiously, since she had often reproached
herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason
be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people,
especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infinitude of
shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the
criticism often made of her in Paris and London that her Puritan
inheritance had given an inartistic rigidity to her moral prospect. It
inclined her to see the paths of life as ruled and numbered like the
checker-board plan of an American city, instead of twisting and winding,
quaintly and picturesquely, with round-about evasions and astonishing
short-cuts, amusing to explore, whether for the finding or the losing of
the way, as in any of the capitals long trodden by the feet of men.
Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well
defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those
who could not easily do right could wander vaguely, without precisely
doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. Into
this tortuous maze her spirit now tried to penetrate, as occasionally,
to visit some historic monument, she had plunged into the slums of a
medieval town.

It was an exercise that brought her nothing but a feeling of
bewilderment. Having no sense of locality for this kind of labyrinth,
she could only turn round and round confusedly. All she could do, when
from the drooping of her father's lids she feared he was falling off to
sleep, leaving the question unsettled, was to say, helplessly:

"I suppose you'll be sorry now for having told me."