ative analysis.
For this cause it required a longer after-dinner stay at the Farnhams'
than he had been allowing himself, to re-establish the norm of
self-assurance.

This was coming to be the net result of a better acquaintance with
Charlotte Farnham; a growth in the grace of self-containment, and in a
just appreciation of the mighty power that lies in propinquity--the
propinquity of an inspiring ideal. Miss Farnham was never enthusiastic;
that, perhaps, would be asking too much of an ideal; but what she lacked
in warmth was made up in cool sanity, backed by a moral sense that
seemed never to waver. Unerringly she placed her finger upon the human
weaknesses in his book-people, and unfalteringly she bade him reform
them.

For his _Fidelia_, as he described her, she exhibited a gentle
affection, tempered by a compassionate pity for her weaknesses and
waverings; an attitude, he fatuously told himself, forced upon her
because her own standards were so much higher than any he could
delineate or conceive. For _Joan_ there was also compassion, but it was
mildly contemptuous.

"If I did not know that you are incapable of doing such a thing, I might
wonder if you are not drawing your _Joan_ from the life, Mr. Griswold,"
she said, a little coldly, on this same evening of rehabilitations.
"Since such characters are to be found in real life, I suppose they may
have a place in a book. But you must not commit the unpardonable sin of
making your readers condone the evil in her for the sake of the good."

"May we not sometimes condone a little evil for the sake of a great
good?" he pleaded in extenuation.

Her answer was rather disconcerting.

"Life is full of just such temptations; the temptation to bargain with
expediency. We can only pray blindly to be delivered in the hour of
trial."

They were sitting together on the vine-sheltered porch, and the street
electrics with the lamplight from the sitting-room windows served merely
to temper the velvety gloom of the summer night. He would have given
much to be able to see her face, but the darkness came between.

"That opens the door to the larger question which is always asking for
its answer," he said, letting the thought that was uppermost slip into
speech. "At its very best, life is a compromise, not necessarily
between good and evil, but between the thing possible and the thing
impossible. It is not until we are strong enough to break the shacklings
of the traditions tha