the other. But now it was a love static, inoperative.
The warm flow did not run any more. Yet each would have died for the
other, would have done anything to spare the other hurt.

Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into
a chair as if she wished never to rise again--never to make the
effort. And Alvina quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and
take away her music, try to make everything smooth. And continually
the young woman exhorted the elder to work less, to give up her
pupils. But Miss Frost answered quickly, nervously:

"When I don't work I shan't live."

"But why--?" came the long query from Alvina. And in her
expostulation there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.

Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.

In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar,
after so many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy
with Miss Pinnegar--it was so easy to get on with her, she left so
much unsaid. What was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than
anything that was expressed. She began to hate outspokenness and
direct speaking-forth of the whole mind. It nauseated her. She
wanted tacit admission of difference, not open, wholehearted
communication. And Miss Pinnegar made this admission all along. She
never made you feel for an instant that she was one with you. She
was never even near. She kept quietly on her own ground, and left
you on yours. And across the space came her quiet commonplaces--but
fraught with space.

With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that
Miss Frost trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss
Pinnegar. But her very breeding had that Protestant, northern
quality which assumes that we have all the same high standards,
really, and all the same divine nature, intrinsically. It is a fine
assumption. But willy-nilly, it sickened Alvina at this time.

She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar's humble
wisdom with a new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley,
who, they read in the newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.

"I suppose," said Miss Pinnegar, "it takes his sort to make all
sorts."

Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to
Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too.
And it took her father's sort--as well as her mother's and Miss
Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards