aunt for a whole
day and night. Year after year, she too had awakened in the morning to
her tasks for another--for this woman who had demanded them as her
right. She too had given her time, her thought, her soul, almost, to
another. If she had not given her heart, it was perhaps because it was
not asked; perhaps, again, it was because she had no heart to give.

Sometimes, in that strange, emotionless existence she had lived so long
where duty took the place of love, she had wondered about that. If she
had a heart, it never beat any faster to let her know she had it.

She paid her debt of duty in full--paid until her release came. In the
final two weeks of her aunt's life she had never left her side.
Patiently, steadfastly, she helped with all there was in her to fight
that last fight. When it was over, she did not break down, as the
doctors predicted. She went to bed and slept forty-eight hours, and
awoke ten years younger.

She awoke as one out of bondage, and stared with keen, eager eyes at a
new world. For a few weeks she had twenty-four hours a day of her own.
Then Peter had come, and others had come, and finally Teddy had come.
They wanted to take from her that which she had just gained--each in
his own fashion.

"Give us of yourself," they pleaded. "Begin again your sacrifices."

Peter put it best, even though he did not say much. But she had only
to look in his eyes and read his proposal.

"Come with me and stand by my side while I carve my career," was what
his eyes said. "I'll love you and make you love me as Marion loves.
You 'll begin the day with me, and you 'll guard my home while I 'm
gone until night, and you'll share my honors and my disappointments,
and perhaps a time will come when Marion will stand in the next room,
as once you stood in the next room. Then--"

It was at this point she drew back. Then her soul would go out into
the new-born soul, and after that she would only live and breathe and
hope through that other. When Marion laughed and said that she was as
she was because she did not know, Marion was wrong. It was because she
did know--because she knew how madly and irrevocably she would give, if
ever she gave again. There would be nothing left for herself at all.
It would be as if she had died.

She did not wish to give like that. She wished to live a little. She
wished to be herself a little--herself as she now was. She wished to
get back some of those years betw