nd like an ostrich and, since she sees nothing, be womanly. If I have
a soul at all, and it can't sail beyond a harbor's breakwater, I have
nothing to lose, but if it can go out and come back safe it has the
right to do it. That's what college means to me: the preparation for a
real life: the chance to equip myself. That's why the question seems a
vital crisis--why _it_ is a vital crisis."

"Conscience," he said thoughtfully, "you have described the exact sort
of intolerant piety, which tempts one to admire brilliant wickedness.
You can't accept another's belief unless it's your own. That is one of
Life's categorical rules. It's not a problem."

"It's so categorical," she retorted quickly, "that there is no answer to
it except the facts. My father is old. He has burned out his life in his
fierce service of his God and his conscience. To tell him how paltry is
the sum of his life's effort, in my eyes, would be like laughing aloud
at his sermon."

"And yet you can't possibly take up the life of an outgrown age because
he prefers the thought of yesterday."

"I'm afraid I'll have to--and--"

"And what?"

"And I think--it's going to break my heart. I've got to live a lie to
keep a man, who regards a lie as a mortal sin, happy in the belief that
he has never tolerated a lie."

"My God, Conscience," Stuart broke out, "this is the New England
conscience seeking martyrdom. Life runs forward, not back. Rivers don't
climb hills."

"I have said that to myself a thousand times," she gravely replied, "but
it doesn't answer the question. There's no compulsion in the world so
universal as the tyranny of weakness over strength. Haven't you seen it
everywhere? Wherever people have to live together you find it. You find
the strong submitting to all sorts of petty persecutions, and petty
persecutions are the kind that kill, because the weak are nervous or
easily wrought up and must have allowances made for them. And the person
so considered always thinks himself strong beyond others and never
suspects the truth. Only the weak and foolish can strut independently
through life."

"And yet to draw the blinds and shut out the light of life because some
one else chooses to sit in the dark is unspeakably morbid."

Conscience shrugged her shoulders. "Sitting in the dark or living
righteously--there's no difference but point of view. My father has been
true to his convictions. The fact that his goodness is no broader than
his hymn book