oughts. It seemed so cruel a thing that Ann's
past--whatever it might be, and surely nothing short of a "past" could
make a girl want to kill herself--should rise up and damn her now. To him
she was a dear lovely girl--the sort of a girl a man would want to marry.
Very well then, intrinsically, she _was_ that. Why not let people _be_
what they were? Why not let them be themselves, instead of what one
thought they would be from what one knew of their lives? It was so easy
to see marks when one knew of things which one's philosophy held would
leave marks. It seemed a fairer and a saner thing to let human beings be
what their experiences had actually made them rather than what one
thought those experiences would make them.

Captain Prescott had blighted a Cuban woman's life--for his own pleasure
and vanity. With Ann it may have been the press of necessity, or it may
have been--the call of life. Either one, being driven by life, or drawn
to it, seemed less ignominious than trifling with life.

Why would it be so much worse for Captain Prescott to marry Ann than it
would be for Ann to marry Captain Prescott?

The man who mended the boats would back her up in that!

Through her somber perplexity there suddenly darted the sportive idea of
getting Ann in the army! The audacious little imp of an idea peeped
around corners in Katie's consciousness and tried to coquet with her.
Banished, it came scampering back to whisper that Ann would not bring the
army its first "past"--either masculine or feminine. Only in the army
they managed things in such wise that there was no need of committing
suicide. Ann had been a bad manager.

But at that moment they were joined by Captain Prescott's mother and he
retired for a solitary smoke.

CHAPTER XX

Mrs. Prescott made vivid and compelling those days, those things, which
Katie had a little while before had the fancy of so easily slipping away
from. She made them things which wove themselves around one, or rather,
things of which one seemed an organic part, from which one could no more
pull away than the tree's branch could pull away from the tree's trunk.

In her presence Katie was claimed by those things out of which she had
grown, claimed so subtly that it seemed a thing outside volition. Mrs.
Prescott did not, in any form, say things were as they were; it was only
that she breathed it.

How could one combat with words, or in action, that rooted so much deeper
than mere wor