he two
Virginias--the Virginia who desired and the Virginia who had learned
from the ages to stifle her desire--wrestled for the first time
together.

"Virginia!" floated Abby's breezy tones from the street behind her, and
turning, she rode back to the Goodes' gate, where the others were
dismounting. "Virginia, aren't you going to Atlantic City with us
to-morrow?"

Again she hesitated. Almost unconsciously her gaze passed from Abby to
Oliver, and she saw his pride in her in the smile with which he watched
her.

"Yes, I'll go with you," she replied after a minute.

She had, for once in her life, done the thing she wanted to do simply
because she wanted to do it. She had won back what she was losing; she
had fought a fair fight and she had triumphed; yet as she rode down the
street to her gate, there was none of the exultation of victory, none of
the fugitive excitement of pleasure even in her heart. Like other
mortals in other triumphant instants, she was learning that the fruit of
desire may be sweet to the eyes and bitter on the lips. She had
sacrificed duty to pleasure, and suddenly she had discovered that to one
with her heritage of good and evil the two are inseparable.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PANG OF MOTHERHOOD

In the night Harry awoke crying. He had dreamed, he said between his
sobs, when Virginia, slipperless and in her nightdress, bent over him,
that his mother was going away from him forever.

"Only for two nights, darling. Here, lean close against mother. Don't
you know that she wouldn't stay away from her precious boy?"

"But two nights are so long. Aren't two nights almost forever?"

"Why, my lamb, it was just two nights ago that grandma came over and
told you the Bible story about Joseph and his brothers. That was only a
teeny-weeny time ago, wasn't it?"

"But you were here, then mamma. And this morning was almost forever. You
stayed out so long that Lucy said you weren't coming back any more."

"That was naughty of Lucy because she is old enough to know better. Why
do you choke that way? Does your throat hurt you?"

"It hurts because you are going away, mamma."

"But I'm going only to be with papa, precious. Don't you want poor papa
to have somebody with him?"

"He's so big he can go by himself. But suppose the black man should come
in the night while you are away, and I'd get scared and nobody would
hear me."

"Grandma would hear you, Harry, and there isn't any black man that come