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 one side surrounded by fields and forests, relations and servants, factories and banks, Mrs. Daggett bowing to the Bishop of Massachusetts and hugging the social register,—also, as Max Bruff would say, the book of etiquette,—and, for good measure, orange blossoms, a motor car from Aunt Sarita Scantleberry, a Babylonian statuette from Mortimer Pearn. And on the other side of the scales—what? Nothing but the way my cheek went from the corner of my eye to my chin. I didn't want to go to any old weddings either!

"Late that afternoon she got back, all cool, fresh, competent, and solicitous. Inside an hour she had speeded up the household, put flowers in shady corners, consulted Emma Kittendorf about Frances' diet, and changed into a dinner frock and thereby a sort of radiant prettiness of the elusive kind which,—despite the gray-blueness of her eyes, the straightness of her nose, the waviness of her brown hair, the sheen of her skin, the slenderness of her feet,—you always associate with girls on the horizon. I mean I'm repeatedly taken by surprise to find Rhoda seductive, when heaven knows it's evident enough!

"I didn't know how, nor what to tell her. A complete explanation was out of the question, for I couldn't explain it completely even to myself. All I could say was that I was going away to give my soul a chance,—and as I said it I could hear my soul piping up inside me and echoing, 'Yes he is, he's going away to give me a chance, he is, he is.'