dled by fear made intense
moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the
lives of men.

Today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. She was
going back with new vision, new courage. They must not any longer cling
together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment
of one another for the enforced isolation. They must let themselves go
out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope
for more from life, _claim_ more. As she rose and started towards home
there was a new spring in her step. For her part, she was through with
that shrinking back! She hoped she could bring Stuart to share her
feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so
stimulated and heartened her. Her hope for their future lay there.

Climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had
given up, for which they had grieved. Well, they had grieved too much,
she resolutely decided now. There were wider horizons than the one that
shut down upon that town. She was not conquered! She would not be
conquered. She stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being
free. She had been a weakling to think her life all settled! Only
cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for
the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder--but surely one should
not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should
light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now
that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one
lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had
been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to
grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not
leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to
the stern beauty of that. Not that one stay with love in the same place,
but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on.

Eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a
final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. It
became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people
who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not
as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. She was through
grieving for those people. She was going on--past them--so far beyond
them that her need for