Oh, it was no little thing for which she was fighting!  Kate tried to console herself with that.  If she passionately desired to create an organization which should exercise parental powers over orphaned or poorly guarded children, still more did she wish to set an example of efficiency for women, illustrating to them with how firm a step woman might tread the higher altitudes of public life, making an achievement, not a compromise, of labor.

Moreover, no other woman in the country had at present had an opportunity that equaled her own.  Look at it how she would, throb as she might with a woman’s immemorial nostalgia for a true man’s love, she could not escape the relentless logic of the situation.  It was not the hour for her to choose her own pleasure.  She must march to battle leaving love behind, as the heroic had done since love and combat were known to the world.

XXXV

Morning came.  She was called early that she might take the train for the East, and arising from her sleepless bed she summoned her courage imperatively.  She determined that, however much she might suffer from the reproaches of her inner self,—­that mystic and hidden self which so often refuses to abide by the decisions of the brain and the conscience,—­she would not betray her falterings.  So she was able to go down to the breakfast-room with an alert step and a sufficiently gallant carriage of the head.

Honora was there, as pale as Kate herself, and she did not scruple to turn upon her departing guest a glance both regretful and forbidding.  Kate looked across the breakfast-table at her gloomy aspect.

“Honora,” she said with some exasperation, “you’ve walked your path, and it wasn’t the usual one, now, was it?  But I stood fast for your right to be unusual, didn’t I?  Then, when the whole scheme of things went to pieces and you were suffering, I didn’t lay your misfortune to the singularity of your life.  I knew that thousands and thousands of women, who had done the usual thing and chosen the beaten way, had suffered just as much as you.  I tried to give you a hand up—­blunderingly, I suppose, but I did the best I could.  Of course, I’m a beast for reminding you of it.  But what I want to know is, why you should be looking at me with the eyes of a stony-hearted critic because I’m taking the hardest road for myself.  You don’t suppose I’d do it without sufficient reason, do you?  Standing at the parting of the ways is a serious matter, however interesting it may be at the moment.”

Honora’s face flushed and her eyes filled.

“Oh,” she cried, “I can’t bear to see you putting happiness behind you.  What’s the use?  Don’t you realize that men and women are little more than motes in the sunshine, here for an hour and to-morrow—­nothing!  I’m pretty well through with those theories that people call principles and convictions.  Why not be obedient to Nature?  She’s the great teacher.  Doesn’t she tell you to take love and joy when they come your way?”