learn from her own lips what he had already learned from the letter
which he had received from her the day before; namely, that she found
it necessary for her own peace of mind to break off her engagement with
him.

Phyllis Ayrton had felt for some months that it would be a great
privilege for any woman to become the wife of a clergyman. Like many
other girls who have a good deal of time for thought,--thought about
themselves, their surroundings, and the world in general,--she had
certain yearnings after a career. But she had lived all her life in
Philistia, and considered it to be very well adapted as a place of abode
for a proper-minded young woman; in fact, she could not imagine any
proper-minded young woman living under any other form of government than
that which found acceptance in Philistia. She had no yearning to
startle her neighbors. With a large number of young women, the idea that
startling one's neighbors is a career by itself seems to prevail just at
present; but Phyllis had no taste in this direction. Writing a book
and riding a bicycle were alike outside her calculations of a scheme of
life. Hospital nursing was nothing that she would shrink from; at the
same time, it did not attract her; she felt that she could dress quite
as becomingly as a hospital nurse in another way.

She wondered, if it should come to the knowledge of the heads of the
government of Philistia that she had a yearning to become the wife of
a clergyman, would they regard her as worthy to be conducted across the
frontier, and doomed to perpetual expatriation. When she began to think
out this point, she could not but feel that if she were deserving of
punishment,--she looked on expulsion from Philistia as the severest
punishment that could be dealt out to her, for she was extremely
patriotic,--there were a good many other young women, and women who were