, your doing it for me."

She had suppressed a smile, and had accepted. "Thanks, Dad," she had
answered. "It will be nice, having you as my backer."

Her admiration of the independent woman had undergone some modification
since she had come in contact with her. Woman was intended to be
dependent upon man. It was the part appointed to him in the social
scheme. Woman had hers, no less important. Earning her own living did
not improve her. It was one of the drawbacks of civilization that so
many had to do it of necessity. It developed her on the wrong
lines--against her nature. This cry of the unsexed: that woman must
always be the paid servant instead of the helper of man--paid for being
mother, paid for being wife! Why not carry it to its logical conclusion,
and insist that she should be paid for her embraces? That she should
share in man's labour, in his hopes, that was the true comradeship. What
mattered it, who held the purse-strings!

Her room was always kept ready for her. Often she would lie there,
watching the moonlight creep across the floor; and a curious feeling
would come to her of being something wandering, incomplete. She would
see as through a mist the passionate, restless child with the rebellious
eyes to whom the room had once belonged; and later the strangely self-
possessed girl with that impalpable veil of mystery around her who would
stand with folded hands, there by the window, seeming always to be
listening. And she, too, had passed away. The tears would come into her
eyes, and she would stretch out yearning arms towards their shadowy
forms. But they would only turn upon her eyes that saw not, and would
fade away.

In the day-time, when Arthur and her father were at the works, she would
move through the high, square, stiffly-furnished rooms, or about the
great formal garden, with its ordered walks and level lawns. And as with
knowledge we come to love some old, stern face our childish eyes had
thought forbidding, and would not have it changed, there came to her with
the years a growing fondness for the old, plain brick-built house.
Generations of Allways had lived and died there: men and women somewhat
narrow, unsympathetic, a little hard of understanding; but at least
earnest, sincere, seeking to do their duty in their solid, unimaginative
way. Perhaps there were other ways besides those of speech and pen.
Perhaps one did better, keeping to one's own people; the very qualities