“No! no!  At least I can understand that.  It was the—­the most beautiful and tender tragedy.  That is the trouble.  It was so—­wonderful, that I fear no man can ever quite forget and take the new love without a backward look.  And oh!  Brace, I must have—­my own!  Men cannot always understand women when they say this.  They think, when we say we want our own lives, that it means lives running counter to theirs.  This is not so.  We want, we must choose—­but the best of us want the common life that draws close to the heart of things; we want to go with our men and along their way.  Our way and theirs are the same way, when love is big enough.”

“Lyn—­there isn’t a man on God’s earth worthy of—­you!”

“Brace, look at me—­answer true.  Am I such that a man could really want me?”

He looked long at her.  Bravely he strove to forget the blood tie that held them.  He regarded her from the viewpoint that another man might have.  Then he said: 

“Yes.  As God hears me, Lyn—­yes!”

She dropped her head upon his shoulder and wept as if grief instead of joy were sweeping over her.  Presently she raised her tear-wet face and said: 

“I’m going to marry Con, dear, as soon as he wants me.  I hate to say this, Brace, but it is a little as if Conning had come home to me from an honourable war—­a bit mutilated.  I must try to get used to him and I will!  I will!”

Kendall held her to him close.  “Lyn, I never knew until this moment how much I have to humbly thank God for.  Oh! if men only could see ahead, young fellows I mean, they would not come to a woman—­mutilated.  I haven’t much to offer, heaven knows, but—­well, Lyn, I can offer a clear record to some woman—­some day!”

All that day Lynda thought of the future.  Sitting in her workshop with the toy-like emblems of her craft at hand she thought and thought.  It seemed to her, struggling alone, that men and women, after all, walked through life—­largely apart.  They had built bridges with love and necessity and over them they crossed to touch each other for a space, but oh! how she longed for a common highway where she and Con could walk always together!  She wanted this so much, so much!

At five o’clock she telephoned to Truedale.  She knew he generally went to his apartment at that hour.

“I—­I want to see you, Con,” she said.

“Yes, Lyn.  Where?”

She felt the answer meant much, so she paused.

“After dinner, Con, and come right up to—­to my workshop.”

“I will be there—­early.”

Lynda was never more her merry old self than she was at dinner; but she was genuinely relieved when Brace told her he was going out.

“What are you going to do, Lyn?” he asked.

“Why—­go up to my workshop.  I’ve neglected things horribly, lately.”

“I thought that night work was taboo?”

“I rarely work at night, Brace.  And you—­where are you going?”