or everybody's happiness."

"Even if it seems that it--it _couldn't_?"

"I'm only uttering platitudes, dearie, when I say that happiness is the
flower of right. No other plant can grow it; and that plant can't grow
any other flower. When you've done the thing you feel you're called to
do--the thing you couldn't refuse while still keeping your
self-respect--well, then, you needn't be afraid that any one will suffer
in the long run--and yourself least of all."

"In the long run! That means--"

"Oh, there may be a short run. I'm not denying that. But no one worth
his salt would be afraid of it. And that, dearie," he added, blinking,
"is all I know about love affairs."

There being no one in the gallery on which the office opened, she
kissed him as she thanked him and went away. She walked homeward, taking
the more retired streets through Cambridge and into Waverton, so as to
be the more free for thinking. It was a relief to her to have spoken
out. Oddly enough, she felt her heart lighter toward Davenant from the
mere fact of having told some one, or having partially told some one,
that she loved him.

When, on turning in at the gate of Tory Hill, she saw a taxicab standing
below the steps of the main entrance, she was not surprised, since
Ashley occasionally took one to run out from town. But when a little
lady in furs and an extravagant hat stepped out to pay the chauffeur
Olivia stopped to get her breath. If it hadn't been impossible she would
have said--

But the taxicab whizzed away, and the little lady tripped up the steps.

Olivia felt herself unable to move. The motor throbbed past her, and out
the gate, but she still stood incapable of going farther. It seemed long
before the pent-up emotions of the last month or two, controlled,
repressed, unacknowledged, as they had been, found utterance in one loud
cry: "Aunt Vic!"

Not till that minute had she guessed her need of a woman, a Guion, one
of her very own, a mother, on whose breast to lay her head and weep her
cares out.

* * * * *

The first tears since the beginning of her trials came to Olivia Guion,
as, with arms clasped round her aunt and forehead pressed into the
little old lady's furs, she sat beside her on a packing-case in the
hail. She cried then as she never knew before she was capable of crying.
She cried for the joy of the present, for the trouble of the past, and
for the relief of clinging to some one to who