“Yes, but she’s got what she wants,” Jenny whispered in the darkness.  “That’s what she wants.  It wouldn’t do for me.  Only in this world you’ve all got to have one pattern, whether it suits you or not.  Else you’re not ‘right.’  ‘They’ don’t like it.  And I’m outside ...  I’m a misfit.  Eh, well:  it’s no good whimpering about it.  What must be, must; as they say!”

Soberly she moved from the window and began to undress in the darkness, stopping every now and then as if she were listening to that low humming far beyond the houses, when the thought of unresting life made her heart beat more quickly.  Away there upon the black running current of the river was Keith, on that tiny yacht so open upon the treacherous sea to every kind of danger.  And nothing between Keith and sudden, horrible death but that wooden hulk and his own seamanship.  She was Keith’s:  she belonged to him; but he did not belong to her.  To Keith she might, she would give all, as she had done; but he would still be apart from her.  He might give his love, his care:  but she knew that her pride and her love must be the love and pride to submit—­not Keith’s.  Away from him, released from the spell, Jenny knew that she had yielded to him the freedom she so cherished as her inalienable right.  She had given him her freedom.  It was in his power.  For her real freedom was her innocence and her desire to do right.  It was not that she wanted to defy, so much as that she could bear no shackles, and that she had no respect for the belief that things should be done only because they were always done, and for no other reason but that of tradition.  And she feared nothing but her own merciless judgment.

It was not now that she dreaded Emmy’s powerlessness to forgive her, or the opinion of anybody else in the world.  It was that she could not forgive herself.  Those who are strong enough to live alone in the world, so long as they are young and vigorous, have this rare faculty of self-judgment.  It is only when they are exhausted that they turn elsewhere for judgment and pardon.

Jenny sat once again upon the bed.

“Oh Keith, my dearest....” she began.  “My Keith....”  Her thoughts flew swiftly to the yacht, to Keith.  With unforgettable pain she heard his voice ringing in her ears, saw his clear eyes, as honest as the day, looking straight into her own.  Pain mingled with love and pride; and battled there within her heart, making a fine tumult of sensation; and Jenny felt herself smiling in the darkness at such a conflict.  She even began very softly to laugh.  But as if the sound checked her and awoke the secret sadness that the tumultuous sensations were trying to hide, her courage suddenly gave way.

“Keith!” she gently called, her voice barely audible.  Only silence was there.  Keith was far away—­unreachable.  Jenny pressed her hands to her lips, that were trembling uncontrollably.  She rose, struggling for composure, struggling to get back to the old way of looking at everything.  It seemed imperative that she should do so.  In a forlorn, quivering voice she ventured: