e one particular in which he is not entirely a man."

The violet eyes grew quickly hostile. The girl was keen enough to
argue, but she was in no mood for refutation.

"I am afraid that I do not follow you?" came coldly from her.

"There comes a day in every woman's life, of course," Miss Sarah
ignored sweetly the interruption, "when she has to leave girlhood
behind. And lest that sound bromidic and trite, I will add that I do
not mean the trivial material things of immaturity, but rather the
happy irresponsibility which has no place in a woman's life."

That statement offered a plain enough opening.

"Am I responsible for his unhappiness?" Barbara flashed out. "Is the
fault entirely mine because----" She faltered, ashamed of her
abruptness which had brought a hurt bit of color to Miss Sarah's
cheeks. "I never gave him to understand--I told him always I could not
care!"

"Please bear with me a little to-day." Miss Sarah's sweetness had
become humble. "I seem vagarious, I know. And we are not considering
Stephen, Barbara. If you had been doing so, all these hours while you
have been wasting your nervous energy in tearing around the
country-side, it would be different. But women never consider the man
in such a situation, do they? Aren't they too entirely heedless for
that? I was merely trying to tell you that the day has come when you
must consider well your own happiness."

Instantly Barbara condemned such a doctrine.

"If that is true of others," she retorted, "they are even more
despicable than I know myself to be."

Until that moment Caleb Hunter's tiny sister had kept her brave eyes
clear. They clouded now. They went beyond that pale and sullen and
stormily pretty visage.

"I was a woman like that," she said, with her quaint simplicity of
accent. "Do you look upon me with any such degree of scorn? I was
face to face with such a decision; and yet not the same either, for
mine was far simpler than yours. But I considered neither his
happiness nor my own, simply because I lost sight of the years and
years to come, in the momentary joy I found in his--his importunity.
He was very big and strong and cheerful, like Stephen, Barbara, and I
was sure he would not grudge me my last moment of girl-vanity, when I
did surrender--to-morrow."

There the quaint voice caught and broke. The girl's eyes flew wider
and hotter shame for her sulkiness stained her cheeks. For suddenly
Miss Sarah was fightin