're a young woman. Don't you know you are?"

"I am glad I am young," said Electra. Her eyes were shining. "I shall
have the more years to devote to it."

"You don't mean to say you propose crossing alone? Did you want to drag
me out of my coffin to see you landed there respectably?"

"I am quite willing to go alone," said Electra, still with her air of
beatific certainties. "I shall be the more unhampered. You must stay
here all you want to, grandmother. Keep the house open. Act exactly as
if it were yours."

A remembrance of the time when she had thought the place not altogether
her own tempered the warmth of that permission. Some severity crept into
her demeanor, and Madam Fulton, recognizing its birth, received it
humbly as no more than she had earned.

"When are you going, Electra?" she asked.

"In about a month. Grandmother!" Electra, in her worship of the conduct
of life, hardly knew how to express strong emotions without offense to
her finer instincts. "I don't forget, grandmother," she hesitated, "that
I ought to be with you."

"Why ought you?"

"Because--grandmother, haven't I a duty to you?"

"A duty!" the old lady muttered. "The devil fly away with it!"

"I beg your pardon, grandmother?"

"I beg yours, my dear. Never swear before a lady! No, no. You haven't
any duty towards me."

"But there are other calls." Electra struggled to find words that should
not tell too much. She ended lamely, "There are calls I cannot
disregard." There rose dimly before her mind some of the injunctions
that bid men leave father and mother for the larger vision.

"There's Billy Stark," said the old lady, with a quickened interest.
"Fancy! he's been away all day."

Electra rose and went in again. She was not sensitive now to the ironies
of daily life, but it did occur to her that her grandmother was more
excited at seeing Billy Stark home after a day in town than by her own
great conclusion. Electra had thought solemnly about the magnitude of
the decision she was making when she gave up the care of grandmother to
follow that larger call, but again she found herself outside the line of
recognized triumphs. She had announced her victory and nobody knew it.

Billy Stark had brought his old friend a present: a box of the
old-fashioned peppermints she liked. She took off the string with a
youthful eagerness.

"My dear," said she, "what do you think has happened now?"

"I know what has happened to me," said Billy. He