Doctor Martin, even Doris, expected Nancy to come when she was called and go to bed when the clock struck ten, while Joan could follow her own sweet will.

At this point Nancy re-read Joan’s letters—­all letters from Joan were common property.  If ever there was innocent jugglery Joan’s letters were.  They were vivid and interesting; they carried one along on a stream as clear as crystal, but they arrived at nothing.

The studio was left to the imagination of the reader.  Doris saw it as a safe and artistic home for earnest young girlhood; Nancy saw it as an open sesame to fun, rather wilder than school bats, but with the same delicious tang.  Doctor Martin viewed the place as most dangerous, and those young people gathered there as perilous offsprings of a much-deplored departure from conservative youth.

“Fancy Joan helping in a restaurant!” groaned Nancy when Joan had particularized about her “job.”  “Joan, of all people!”

“It will be good practice,” Doris remarked in reply.  “When Joan marries, she will have had some experience.”

“Marry?” David Martin broke in—­he was on one of his flying visits.  “If anything could unfit a girl for marriage, the thing Joan is doing is that.”

“Very well,” Doris said, quietly; “marriage isn’t everything, David.”

Doris was beginning to defend Joan, and it hurt her to be obliged to do so.  She did not regret the relinquishing of the girl, but she had hoped, in her deepest love, that the experiment might either prove a failure or that it might carry Joan to a peak—­not a dead level.  It was beginning to seem that the sacrifice on her part meant simply separating Joan from her—­not giving Joan to anything worth while.

There were moments, rather vague, elusive ones, to be sure, when Doris turned from Joan and contemplated Nancy.

“The child is perfectly content and happy,” she thought; “but ought she to be so—­at her age?  Nancy should marry—­she will, of course, some day.——­” Then Doris wondered whom Nancy could marry.

“Next winter I may be able to go to New York,” she comforted herself; “or I’ll send Nancy to Emily Tweksbury; the child shall have her life chance.”

But with Doris the inevitable was happening:  she was sliding gracefully down the inclined plane which others had arranged for her.  She was making no effort, because none was required of her.  The peace and comfort of the old house in restoring comparative health had placed its mark upon her.  It was wonderful to lie on the porch and watch the beauty of The Gap change from season to season.  The sound of the river was always in her ears, and there was a dramatic appeal in kneeling at the altar in the tiny chapel to pray for them whom she loved so tenderly.

And Nancy was so sweet and companionable!  Poor little Nancy!  She was playing Doris’s minor accompaniment as once she had played Joan’s more vivid one.  But the youth in her was surging and rebelling—­not against love and service, but inequality.