life could go on. It seemed to her at present that she
couldn't re-enter the house in Tenth Street without having decided first
whether she might trust the Burrages or not. By "trust" them, she meant
trust them to fail in winning Verena over, while at the same time they
put Basil Ransom on a false scent. Olive was able to say to herself that
he probably wouldn't have the hardihood to push after her into those
gilded saloons, which, in any event, would be closed to him as soon as
the mother and son should discover what he wanted. She even asked
herself whether Verena would not be still better defended from the young
Southerner in New York, amid complicated hospitalities, than in Boston
with a cousin of the enemy. She continued to walk down the Fifth Avenue,
without noticing the cross-streets, and after a while became conscious
that she was approaching Washington Square. By this time she had also
definitely reasoned it out that Basil Ransom and Henry Burrage could not
both capture Miss Tarrant, that therefore there could not be two
dangers, but only one; that this was a good deal gained, and that it
behoved her to determine which peril had most reality, in order that she
might deal with that one only. She held her way to the Square, which, as
all the world knows, is of great extent and open to the encircling
street. The trees and grass-plats had begun to bud and sprout, the
fountains plashed in the sunshine, the children of the quarter, both the
dingier types from the south side, who played games that required much
chalking of the paved walks, and much sprawling and crouching there,
under the feet of passers, and the little curled and feathered people
who drove their hoops under the eyes of French nursemaids--all the
infant population filled the vernal air with small sounds which had a
crude, tender quality, like the leaves and the thin herbage. Olive
wandered through the place, and ended by sitting down on one of the
continuous benches. It was a long time since she had done anything so
vague, so wasteful. There were a dozen things which, as she was staying
over in New York, she ought to do; but she forgot them, or, if she
thought of them, felt that they were now of no moment. She remained in
her place an hour, brooding, tremulous, turning over and over certain
thoughts. It seemed to her that she was face to face with a crisis of
her destiny, and that she must not shrink from seeing it exactly as it
was. Before she rose to