r the first
time summoned for comparison, and the parallel left her branded in her
own mind as an economic parasite. Marriage was the one way in which a
woman of her sort could finance her life, and the only marriage which
for her would be a fulfilment and not a travesty--itself requiring
financing--lay remote.

Anne repressed the first indignant impulse to write to Boone of the
unjustifiable charge against him to which she had been forced to listen.
There at the capital he was adjusting himself to new duties and settling
his shoulders into an unaccustomed harness. She knew that he took these
things seriously since he meant to use their opportunities as
stepping-stones to broader achievement, and a letter on such a subject
would seem hysterical and wanting in faith, when perhaps he was most
depending on that faith. Now she told herself that except for having
unalterably committed herself to that course with foolish emphasis, she
would not even speak incidentally to Boone of the matter. She assured
herself that already she knew the answer and needed no further
evidence--but a pledge was a pledge, and she must have the reply to take
from his lips to her father.

Yet in the weeks which intervened before that opportunity arrived, the
repudiated matter rankled like a poison, which abates none of its
malignity because its victim has pasted an innocuous label on the
bottle.

So one day, while Anne was being tortured in spirit and was telling
herself that she was serenely untroubled, Boone was at the school where
Happy Spradling had for some years been a member of the teaching staff.

His eyes were glowing with appreciation as he went about the place,
recognizing the magic that had grown there. It had woven its spell out
of the dauntless resolution of a little coterie of women who, like
unostentatious vestals, had kindled and fed here, where it meant
everything, the fire of education and wholesomeness. Surrounded by a
hinterland where sloven illiteracy fostered lawlessness, that fire
burned in houses that stood up as monuments both of practical utility
and surprising beauty. Its light was reflected in keen young faces
hungry for education and smiling young eyes in which Boone read the
presage of a new future for his people.

Women had done this thing: women for the most part from the Bluegrass
who had surrendered ease and chosen effort: women who, out of a
volunteer greatness of spirit, elected to "wait in heavy harness o