speak, and she finally said: "It's awfully good of you
to put it that way! I've been afraid you must have been angry with me
and hurt that I--so you didn't mind at all!"

Rankin smiled at little ruefully at her swift conclusion. "I believe in
telling the truth, even to young ladies, and I can not say I didn't mind
at all--or that I don't now. But I am convinced that you were right in
dropping me--out of the realm of acquaintances." His assumption was,
Lydia saw with gratitude, that they were talking simply about a possible
acquaintanceship between them. "It's evidently true--what I told you the
very first time I saw you. We don't belong in the same world."

As he said this, he looked at her with an expression Lydia thought
severe. She protested, "What makes you so sure?"

"Because to live in my world--even to step into it from time to
time--requires the courage to believe in it."

"And you think I didn't?" asked Lydia. It was an inestimable comfort to
her to have brought into the light the problem that had so long lain in
the back of her head, a confused mass of dark conjecture.

"Did you?" he asked steadily. "You ought to know."

There was silence, while Lydia turned her head away and looked at the
brown, flat winter landscape jerking itself past the windows as the car
began to develop speed in the first long, open space between
settlements. She was trying to remember something distinct about the
nightmare of misery that had followed her admission of the identity of
the man who had kissed her hand that starry night in October, but from
the black chaos of her recollection she brought out only, "Oh, you don't
realize how things are with a girl--how many million little ways she's
bound and tied down, just from everybody in the family loving her as--"

"Oh, yes, I do; I prove I do by saying that you were probably right in
yielding so absolutely to that overwhelming influence. If you hadn't the
strength to break through it decisively even once, you certainly
couldn't have gotten any satisfaction out of doing things contrary to
it. So it's all right, you see."

Lydia's drooping face did not show that she derived the satisfaction
from this view of her limitations that her companion seemed to expect.
"You mean I'm a poor-spirited, weak thing, who'd better never try to
take a step of my own," she said with a sorry smile.

"I don't mean anything unkind," he told her gently. "I've succeeded in
convincing myself that you