"Oh, but you are reasonable about it, and know that it is better for
the boy to have change and so on. She acts as if she felt it to be a
conspiracy between the nurse and her husband to steal the child's
affections from her. Really, I felt as if she was coming to love Nino
so fiercely that she had fits of almost hating her husband."

The ringing of the door bell and the entrance of the servant with a
card interrupted the conversation, and Helen had only time to say,--

"Of course on general principles you know I do not agree with you.
Indeed, I should find it hard to justify what I consider the most
meritorious acts of my life if I did. But I do want to say that, given
your creed, your view of marriage seems to me the noble--indeed, the
only one."

As Helen walked home in the gray afternoon, sombre with a winter mist,
she thought over the conversation and measured her life by its
principles.

"If one accepts Edith's standard," she reflected, "it is impossible not
to accept her conclusions. She is a St. Theresa, with her strict
adherence to forms and her loyalty to her convictions. But surely one's
own self has some claims. My first duty to whatever the highest power
is,--the All, perhaps,--must be to do the best I can with myself. It
could not be my duty to go on living with Will"--

She stopped, with a faint shudder, raising her eyes and looking about
upon the wet and dreary landscape with an almost furtive glance, as if
she were oppressed by the fear that the eyes of the husband with whom
she had found it impossible to live, and who for six years had been