profoundly moving. The girl
was overcome with astonishment and remorse--and immense relief. She
ran to her. "Oh, I am! I am! I was only thinking--I've gone against
your judgment." Her nerves, stretched with the sleepless night and the
strain of writing the dreadful letter to Judith, gave way. She broke
into sobs. She put her arms tightly around her aunt's beautiful neck
and laid her head on her shoulder, weeping, her heart swelling, her
mind in a whirling mass of disconnected impressions. Arnold--Judith
... how strange it was that Aunt Victoria really cared for her--did
she really care for Aunt Victoria or only admire her?--did she really
care for anybody, since she was agreeing to stay longer away from
her father and mother?--how good it would be not to have to give up
Helene's services--what a heartless, materialistic girl she was--she
cared for nothing but luxury and money--she would be going abroad now
to Paris--Austin Page--he had kissed her hand ... and yet she felt
that he saw through her, saw through her mean little devices and
stratagems--how astonishing that he should be so very, very rich--it
seemed that a very, very rich man ought to be different from other
men--his powers were so unnaturally great--girls could not feel
naturally about him ... And all the while that these varying
reflections passed at lightning speed through her mind, her nervous
sobs were continuing.

Aunt Victoria taking them, naturally enough, as signs of continued
remorse, lifted her out of this supposed slough of despond with
affectionate peremptoriness. "Don't feel so badly about it, darling.
We won't have any more talk for the present about differing judgments,
or of going away, or of anything uncomfortable"; and in this way,
with nothing clearly understood, on a foundation indeed of
misunderstanding, the decision was made, in the haphazard fashion
which characterizes most human decisions.

The rest of the month was no more consecutive or logical. Into the
midst of the going-away confusion of a household about to remove
itself half around the world, into a house distracted with packing,
cheerless with linen-covers, desolate with rolled-up rugs and cold
lunches and half-packed trunks, came, in a matter-of-fact manner
characteristic of its writer, Judith's answer to Sylvia's letter.
Sylvia opened it, shrinking and fearful of what she would read. She
had, in the days since hers had been sent, imagined Judith's answer in
every possibl