uestion her delicacy might have to contend with. Would she
start for Europe with her young friend at the earliest possible date,
and should she be willing to do so without making conditions? The
inquiry was launched by wire; explanations, in sufficiency, were
promised; extreme urgency was suggested, and a general surrender
invited. It was to the honour of her sincerity that she made the
surrender on the spot, though it was not perhaps altogether to that of
her logic. She had wanted, very consciously, from the first, to give
something up for her new acquaintance, but she had now no doubt that
she was practically giving up all. What settled this was the fulness of
a particular impression, the impression that had throughout more and
more supported her and which she would have uttered so far as she might
by saying that the charm of the creature was positively in the
creature's greatness. She would have been content so to leave it;
unless indeed she had said, more familiarly, that Mildred was the
biggest impression of her life. That was at all events the biggest
account of her, and none but a big, clearly, would do. Her situation,
as such things were called, was on the grand scale; but it still was
not that. It was her nature, once for all--a nature that reminded Mrs.
Stringham of the term always used in the newspapers about the great new
steamers, the inordinate number of "feet of water" they drew; so that
if, in your little boat, you had chosen to hover and approach, you had
but yourself to thank, when once motion was started, for the way the
draught pulled you. Milly drew the feet of water, and odd though it
might seem that a lonely girl, who was not robust and who hated sound
and show, should stir the stream like a leviathan, her companion
floated off with the sense of rocking violently at her side. More than
prepared, however, for that excitement, Mrs. Stringham mainly failed of
ease in respect to her own consistency. To attach herself for an
indefinite time seemed a roundabout way of holding her hands off. If
she wished to be sure of neither touching nor smutching, the straighter
plan would doubtless have been not to keep her friend within reach.
This in fact she fully recognised, and with it the degree to which she
desired that the girl should lead her life, a life certain to be so
much finer than that of anybody else. The difficulty, however, by good
fortune, cleared away as soon as she had further recognised, as she w