im about his future? Has William Rodney cause to be jealous of
your conduct, and what do you propose to do about Mary Datchet? What are
you going to do? What does honor require you to do? they repeated.

"Good Heavens!" Katharine exclaimed, after listening to all these
remarks, "I suppose I ought to make up my mind."

But the debate was a formal skirmishing, a pastime to gain
breathing-space. Like all people brought up in a tradition, Katharine
was able, within ten minutes or so, to reduce any moral difficulty to
its traditional shape and solve it by the traditional answers. The book
of wisdom lay open, if not upon her mother's knee, upon the knees of
many uncles and aunts. She had only to consult them, and they would at
once turn to the right page and read out an answer exactly suited to
one in her position. The rules which should govern the behavior of an
unmarried woman are written in red ink, graved upon marble, if, by some
freak of nature, it should fall out that the unmarried woman has not the
same writing scored upon her heart. She was ready to believe that some
people are fortunate enough to reject, accept, resign, or lay down their
lives at the bidding of traditional authority; she could envy them; but
in her case the questions became phantoms directly she tried seriously
to find an answer, which proved that the traditional answer would be
of no use to her individually. Yet it had served so many people, she
thought, glancing at the rows of houses on either side of her, where
families, whose incomes must be between a thousand and fifteen-hundred a
year lived, and kept, perhaps, three servants, and draped their windows
with curtains which were always thick and generally dirty, and must,
she thought, since you could only see a looking-glass gleaming above a
sideboard on which a dish of apples was set, keep the room inside very
dark. But she turned her head away, observing that this was not a method
of thinking the matter out.

The only truth which she could discover was the truth of what she
herself felt--a frail beam when compared with the broad illumination
shed by the eyes of all the people who are in agreement to see together;
but having rejected the visionary voices, she had no choice but to make
this her guide through the dark masses which confronted her. She tried
to follow her beam, with an expression upon her face which would have
made any passer-by think her reprehensibly and almost ridiculously
detach