“Yes, and the longer you think the crazier you will act,” cried Nancy Ellen.  “I know you!  You better promise me now, and stick to it.”

For answer Kate turned off the light; but she did not go to bed.  She sat beside the window and she was still sitting there when dawn crept across the lake and began to lighten the room.  Then she stretched herself beside Nancy Ellen, who roused and looked at her.

“You just coming to bed?” she cried in wonder.

“At least you can’t complain that I didn’t think,” said Kate, but Nancy Ellen found no comfort in what she said, or the way she said it.  In fact, she arose when Kate did, feeling distinctly sulky.  As they returned to their room from breakfast, Kate laid out her hat and gloves and began to get ready to keep her appointment.  Nancy Ellen could endure the suspense no longer.

“Kate,” she said in her gentlest tones, “if you have no mercy on yourself, have some on your children.  You’ve no right, positively no right, to take such a chance away from them.”

“Chance for what?” asked Kate tersely.

“Education, travel, leisure, every opportunity in the world,” enumerated Nancy Ellen.

Kate was handling her gloves, her forehead wrinkled, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“That is one side of it,” she said.  “The other is that neither my children nor I have in our blood, breeding, or mental cosmos, the background that it takes to make one happy with money in unlimited quantities.  So far as I’m concerned personally, I’m happier this minute as I am, than John Jardine’s money ever could make me.  I had a fierce struggle with that question long ago; since I have had nearly eight years of life I love, that is good for my soul, the struggle to leave it would be greater now.  Polly would be happier and get more from life as the wife of big gangling Henry Peters, than she would as a millionaire’s daughter.  She’d be very suitable in a farmhouse parlour; she’d be a ridiculous little figure at a ball.  As for Adam, he’d turn this down quick and hard.”

“Just you try him!” cried Nancy Ellen.

“For one thing, he won’t be here at ten o’clock,” said Kate, “and for another, since it involves my becoming the wife of John Jardine, it isn’t for Adam to decide.  This decision is strictly my own.  I merely mention the children, because if I married him, it would have an inevitable influence on their lives, an influence that I don’t in the least covet either for them or for myself.  Nancy Ellen, can’t you remotely conceive of such a thing as one human being in the world who is satisfied that he has his share, and who believes to the depths of his soul that no man should be allowed to amass, and to use for his personal indulgence, the amount of money that John Jardine does?”

“Yes, I can,” cried Nancy Ellen, “when I see you, and the way you act!  You have chance after chance, but you seem to think that life requires of you a steady job of holding your nose to the grindstone.  It was rather stubby to begin with, go on and grind it clear off your face, if you like.”