“You haven’t fooled us any more than we have fooled ourselves.”  They had reached the lower level now, and could walk side by side.  “You’ve kept us supplemental, and we’ve thought we were noble when we played the supplemental part.  But it doesn’t look so to us any longer.  We want to be ourselves and to justify ourselves.  There’s a good deal of complaint about women not having enough to do—­about the factories and shops taking their work away from them and leaving them idle and inexpressive.  Well, in a way, that’s true, and I’m a strong advocate of new vocations, so that women can have their own purses and all that.  But I know in my heart all this is incidental.  What we really need is a definite set of principles; if we can acquire an inner stability, we shall do very well whether our hands are perpetually occupied or not.  But just at present we poor women are sitting in the ruins of our collapsed faiths, and we haven’t decided what sort of architecture to use in erecting the new one.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much peace left in the world,” mused Wander.  “Do you women think you will have peace when you get this new faith?”

“Oh, dear me,” retorted Kate, “what would you have us do with peace?  You can get that in any garlanded sepulcher.  Peace is like perfection, it isn’t desirable.  We should perish of it.  As long as there is life there is struggle and change.  But when we have our inner faith, when we can see what the thing is for which we are to strive, then we shall cease to be so spasmodic in our efforts.  We’ll not be doing such grotesque things.  We’ll come into new dignity.”

“What you’re trying to say,” said Wander, “is that it is ourselves who are to be our best achievement.  It’s what we make of ourselves that matters.”

“Oh, that’s it!  That’s it!” cried Kate, beating her gloved hands together like a child.  “You’re getting it!  You’re getting it!  It’s what we make of ourselves that matters, and we must all have the right to find ourselves—­to keep exploring till we find our highest selves.  There mustn’t be such a waste of ability and power and hope as there has been.  We must all have our share in the essentials—­our own relation to reality.”

“I see,” he said, pausing at the door, and looking into her face as if he would spell out her incommunicable self.  “That’s what you mean by universal liberty.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“And the man you marry must let you pick your own way, make your own blunders, grow by your own experience.”

“Yes.”

Honora opened the door and looked at them.  She was weak and she leaned against the casing for her support, but her face was tender and calm, and she was regnant over her own mind.

“What is the matter with you two?” she asked.  “Aren’t you coming in to dinner?  Haven’t you any appetites?”

Kate threw her arms about her.

“Oh, Honora,” she cried.  “How lovely you look!  Appetites?  We’re famished.”