“You must think it over, Stephen,” she pleaded.  “Go away now, and try to realize all that it will mean to you.”

“Thinking doesn’t get me anywhere,” he replied.  His face was pale and thoughtful; and Corinna knew, while she watched him, that he had found freedom at last; that he had come into his manhood.  “I’ve made my choice, and I’ll stand by it to-day even if I regret it to-morrow.  You’ve got to take chances; to leave the safe road and strike out into open country.  That’s living.  Otherwise you might as well be dead.  I can’t just cling like moss to institutions that other people have made; to the things that have always been.  I’ve got to take chances—­and I’m enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me—­”

The part of Corinna’s nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in sympathy with his resolve.  Though she gazed down the straight deserted street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible world.

“I understand, dear,” she answered softly.  “I can’t tell whether or not it is the safe way; but I know it is the gallant way.”

“It is the only way,” he responded steadily.  “If I am ever to make anything of my life, this is the test.  I see that I’ve got to meet it.  I shall probably have to meet it every day of my life—­but, by Jove, I’ll meet it!  Patty isn’t just Patty to me.  She is strength and courage.  She is the risk of the future.  I suppose she is the pioneer in my blood, or my mind.  I can’t help what she came from, nor can she.  I’ve got to take that as I take everything else, with the belief that it is worth all the cost.  The thing I feel now is that she has given me back myself.  She has given me a free outlook on life—­”

He stopped abruptly, for there was the sound of footsteps in the house, and after a minute or two, Patty and Gideon Vetch came out on the porch.  The girl looked, except for the red of her mouth, as if the blood had been drawn from her veins, and her eyes were like dark pansies.  All the light had faded from them, changing even their colour.

“Patty,” said Stephen; and he made a step toward her, with his hands outstretched as if he would gather her to him.  Then he stopped and fell back, for the girl was shrinking away from him with a look of fear.

“I can’t talk now,” she answered, smiling with hard lips.  “I am tired.  I can’t talk now.”  Running ahead she went down the steps, through the gate, and into Vetch’s car which was standing beside the curbstone.

“She’s worn out,” explained Vetch.  “I’ll take her home, and you’d better try to get some sleep, Mrs. Page.  You look as tired as Patty.”

“Let me go with you,” returned Corinna.  “Your car is closed, and Patty and I are both bareheaded.”  For a moment she turned back to put her hand on Stephen’s arm.  “I must sleep,” she said.  “I shan’t go to the shop to-day.”