rough Virginia and left her stiller and graver than
before.

"No, it was not a mistake, mother," she answered quietly. "I did what I
was obliged to do. Oliver could not understand."

As she uttered the words, she saw Oliver's face turned to Abby with the
gay and laughing expression she had seen on it when the two rode down
Old Street together, and a wave of passionate jealousy swept over her.
She had let him go alone; he was angry with her; and for three days he
would be with Abby almost every minute. And suddenly, she heard spoken
by a mocking voice at the back of her brain: "You look at least ten
years older than Abby."

"It does seem as if he might have stayed at home," remarked Mrs.
Pendleton; "but he is so used to having his own way that it is harder
for him to give it up than for the rest of us. Your father says you have
spoiled him."

She had spoiled him--this she saw clearly now, she who had never seen
anything clearly until it was too late for sentimentality to work its
harm. From the day of her marriage she had spoiled him because spoiling
him had been for her own happiness as well as for his. She had yielded
to him since her chief desire had been simply to yield and to satisfy.
Her unselfishness had been merely selfishness cloaked in the familiar
aspect of duty. Another vision of him, not as he looked when he was
riding with Abby, but as he had appeared to her in the early days of
their marriage, floated before her. He had been hers utterly then--hers
with his generous impulses, his high ideals, his undisciplined emotions.
And what had she done with him? What were her good intentions--what was
her love, even, worth--when her intentions and her love alike had been
so lacking in wisdom? It was as if she condemned herself with a judgment
which was not her own, as if her life-long habit of seeing only the
present instant had suddenly deserted her.

"He has been so nervous and unlike himself ever since the failure of his
play, mother," she said. "It's hard to understand, but it meant more to
him than a woman can realize."

"I suppose so," returned Mrs. Pendleton sympathetically. "Your father
says that he spoke to him bitterly the other day about being a failure.
Of course, he isn't one in the least, darling," she added reassuringly.

"I sometimes think that Oliver's ambition was the greatest thing in his
life," said Virginia musingly. "It meant to him, I believe, a great deal
of what the children mean to m