had evaded answering, just as Virginia had evaded asking, the
question which both knew had passed unuttered between them--was Abby to
be trusted to keep inviolate the ancient unwritten pledge of honourable
womanhood? Her character was being tested by the single decisive virtue
exacted of her sex.

"I am glad you feel that way," said Virginia in a relieved manner after
a minute, "because I should hate not to believe in Abby, and some people
don't understand her manner--mother among them."

"Oh, she's all right. I'm sure of it," answered Susan, with heartiness.

The wistful sound had passed out of Virginia's voice, while the little
lines faded as suddenly from the corners of her eyes. She looked better
already--only she really ought not to wear such dowdy clothes, even
though she was happily married, reflected Susan, as she watched her, a
few minutes later, pass over the mulberry leaves, which lay, thick and
still, on the sidewalk.

At the corner of Sycamore Street a shopkeeper was putting away his goods
for the night, and in the window Virginia saw a length of hyacinth-blue
silk, matching her eyes, which she had remotely coveted for weeks--never
expecting to possess it, yet never quite reconciling herself to the
thought that it might be worn by some other woman. That length of silk
had grown gradually to symbolize the last glimmer of girlish vanity
which motherhood had not extinguished in her heart; and while she looked
at it now, in her new recklessness of mood, a temptation, born of the
perversity which rules human fate, came to her to go in and buy it while
she was still desperate enough to act foolishly and not be afraid. For
the first time in her life that immemorial spirit of adventure which
lies buried under the dead leaves of civilization at the bottom of every
human heart--with whose re-arisen ghost men have moved mountains and
ploughed jungles and charted illimitable seas--this imperishable spirit
stirred restlessly in its grave and prompted her for once to be
uncalculating and to risk the future. In the flickering motive which
guided her as she entered the shop, one would hardly have recognized the
lusty impulse which had sent her ancestors on splendid rambles of
knight-errantry, yet its hidden source was the same. The simple purchase
of twelve yards of blue silk which she had wanted for weeks! To an
outsider it would have appeared a small matter, yet in the act there was
the intrepid struggle of a persona