Bright sunshine streamed down out of a cloudless sky one afternoon shortly after the ascent of the Pike. Vane stood talking with his sister upon the terrace in front of the Dene. He leaned against the low wall, frowning, for Lucy hitherto had avoided a discussion of the subject which occupied their attention, and now, as he would have said, he could not make her listen to reason.

She stood in front of him, with the point of her parasol pressed firmly into the gravel and her lips set, though in her eyes there was a smile which suggested forbearance. Lucy was tall and spare of figure; a year younger than her brother; and of somewhat determined and essentially practical character. She earned her living in a northern manufacturing town by lecturing on domestic economy, for the public authorities. Vane understood that she also received a small stipend as secretary to some women's organization and that she took a part in suffrage propaganda. She had a thin, forceful face, seldom characterized by repose.

"After all," Vane broke out, "what I'm urging is a very natural thing. I don't like to think of your being forced to work as you are doing, and I've tried to show you that it wouldn't cost me any self-denial to make you an allowance. There's no reason why you should be at the beck and call of those committees any longer."

Lucy's smile grew plainer.

"I don't think that quite describes my position."

"It's possible," Vane agreed with a trace of dryness. "No doubt, you insist that the chairman or lady president give way to you; but this doesn't affect the question. You have to work, anyway."

"But I like it; and it keeps me in some degree of comfort."

The man turned impatiently and glanced about him. The front of the old gray house was flooded with light, and the mossy sward below the terrace glowed luminously green. The shadows of the hollies and cypresses were thin and unsubstantial, but where a beech overarched the grass, Evelyn and Mrs. Chisholm. attired in light draperies, reclined in basket chairs. Carroll, in thin gray tweed, stood near them, talking to Mabel, and Chisholm sat on a bench with a newspaper in his hand. He looked half asleep, and a languorous stillness pervaded the whole scene. Beyond it, the tarn shone dazzlingly, and in the distance ranks of rugged fells towered, dim and faintly blue. All that the eye rested on spoke of an unbroken tranquillity.

"Wouldn't you like this kind of thing, as well?" Vane asked. "Of course, I mean what it implies—the power to take life easy and get as much enjoyment as possible out of it. It wouldn't be difficult, if you'd only take what I'd be glad to give you." He indicated the languid figures in the foreground. "You could, for instance, spend your time among people of this sort. After all, it's what you were meant to do."

"Would that appeal to you?"

"Oh, I like it in the meantime," he evaded.

"Well," Lucy returned curtly, "I believe I'm more at home with the other kind of people—those in poverty, squalor and ignorance. I've an idea that they have a stronger claim on me; but that's not a point I can urge. The fact is, I've chosen my career, and there are practical reasons why I shouldn't abandon it. I had a good deal of trouble in getting a footing, and if I fell out now, it would be harder still to take my place in the ranks again."

"But you wouldn't require to do so."

"I can't be sure. I don't want to hurt you; but, after all, your success was sudden, and one understands that it isn't wise to depend on an income derived from mining properties."

Vane frowned.

"None of you ever did believe in me!"

"I suppose there's some truth in that. You really did give us trouble, you know. Somehow, you were different—you wouldn't fit in; though I believe the same thing applied to me, for that matter."

"And now you don't expect my prosperity to last?"

The girl hesitated, but she was candid by nature.

"Perhaps I'd better answer. You have it in you to work determinedly and, when it's necessary, to do things that men with less courage would shrink from; but I'm doubtful whether yours is the temperament that leads to success. You haven't the huckster's instincts; you're not cold-blooded enough; you wouldn't cajole your friends nor truckle to your enemies."

"If I adopted the latter course, it would certainly be against the grain," Vane confessed.

Lucy laughed.

"Well, I mean to go on earning my living; but you may take me up to
London for a few days, if you want to, and buy me some hats and things.
Then I don't mind your giving something to the Emancipation Society."

"I am not sure that I believe in emancipation; but you may have ten guineas."

"Thank you."

Lucy glanced around toward Carroll, who was approaching them with Mabel.

"I'll give you a piece of advice," she added. "Stick to that man. He's cooler and less headstrong than you are; he'll prove a useful friend."

"What are you two talking about?" asked Carroll. "You look animated."

"Wallace has just promised me ten guineas to assist the movement for the emancipation of women." Lucy answered pointedly. "Our society's efforts are sadly restricted by the lack of funds."

"Vane is now and then a little inconsequential in his generosity,"
Carroll rejoined. "I didn't know he was interested in that kind of thing;
but as I don't like to be outdone by my partner, I'll subscribe the same.
By the way, why do you people reckon these things in guineas?"

"Thanks," smiled Lucy, making an entry in a notebook in a businesslike manner. "As you said it was a subscription, you'll hear from us next year. In answer to your question, it's an ancient custom, and it has the advantage that you get in the extra shillings."

They strolled along the terrace together, and as they went down the steps to the lawn Carroll turned to her with a smile.

"Have you tackled Chisholm yet?"

"I never waste powder and shot," Lucy replied tersely. "A man of his restricted views would sooner subscribe handsomely to a movement to put us down."

"Are you regretting the ten guineas, Vane?" Carroll questioned laughingly. "You don't look pleased."

"The fact is, I wanted to do something that wasn't allowed. I've met with the same disillusionment here as I did in British Columbia."

Lucy looked up at her brother.

"Did you attempt to give somebody money there?"

"I did. It's not worth discussing; and, anyway, she wouldn't listen to me."

They strolled on, Vane frowning, while Carroll, noticing signs of suppressed interest in Lucy's face, smiled unobserved. Neither he nor the others thought of Mabel, who was following them.

Some time after they joined the others, Carroll lay back in a deep chair, with his half-closed eyes turned in Lucy's direction.

"Are you asleep, or thinking hard?" Mrs. Chisholm asked him.

"Not more than half asleep," he laughed. "I was trying to remember A Dream of Fair Women. It's a suitable occupation for a drowsy summer afternoon in a place like this, but I must confess that it was Miss Vane who put it into my head. She reminded me of one or two of the heroines when she was championing the cause of the suffragist."

"You mustn't imagine that Englishwomen in general sympathize with her, or that such ideas are popular at the Dene."

Carroll smiled reassuringly.

"I shouldn't have imagined the latter for a moment. But, as I said, on an afternoon of this kind one may be excused for indulging in romantic fancies. Don't you see what brought those old-time heroines into my mind? I mean the elusive resemblance to their latter-day prototype?"

Mrs. Chisholm looked puzzled.

"No," she declared. "One of them was Greek, another early English, and the finest of all was the Hebrew maid. As they couldn't have been like one another, how could they, collectively, have borne a resemblance to anybody else?"

"That's logical, on the surface. To digress, why do you most admire
Jephthah's daughter, the gentle Gileadite?"

His hostess affected surprise.

"Isn't it evident, when one remembers her patient sacrifice; her fine sense of family honor?"

Carroll felt that this was much the kind of sentiment one could have expected from her; and he did her the justice to believe that it was genuine and that she was capable of living up to her convictions. His glance rested on Vane for a moment, and the latter was startled as he guessed Carroll's thought.

Evelyn sat near him, reclining languidly in a wicker chair. She had been silent, and now that her face was in repose the signs of reserve and repression were plainer than ever. There was, however, pride in it, and Vane felt that she was endowed with a keener and finer sense of family honor than her thin-lipped mother. Her brother's career was threatened by the results of his own imprudence, and though her father could hardly be compared with the Gileadite warrior, there was, Vane fancied, a disturbing similarity between the two cases. It was unpleasant to contemplate the possibility of this girl's being called upon to bear the cost of her relatives' misfortunes or follies.

Carroll looked across at Lucy with a smile.

"You won't agree with Mrs. Chisholm?" he suggested.

"No," answered Lucy firmly. "Leaving out the instance in question, there are too many people who transgress and then expect somebody else—a woman, generally—to serve as a sacrifice."

"I don't agree, either," Mabel broke in. "I'd sooner have been Cleopatra, or Joan of Arc—only she was burned, poor thing."

"That was only what she might have expected. An unpleasant fate generally overtakes people who go about disturbing things," Mrs. Chisholm said severely.

The speech was characteristic, and the others smiled. It would have astonished them had Mrs. Chisholm sympathized with the rebel idealist whose beckoning visions led to the clash of arms.

"Aren't you getting off the track," Vane asked Carroll. "I don't see the drift of your previous remarks."

"Well," drawled Carroll, "there must be, I think, a certain distinctive stamp upon those who belong to the leader type—I mean the people who are capable of doing striking and heroic things. Apart from this, I've been studying you English—I've been over here before—and it has struck me that there's occasionally something imperious, or rather imperial, in the faces of your women in the most northern counties. I can't define the thing, but it's there—in the line of nose, in the mouth, and, I think, most marked in the brows. It's not Saxon, nor Norse, nor Danish; I'd sooner call it Roman."

Vane was slightly astonished. He had seen that look in Evelyn's face, and now, for the first time, he recognized it in his sister's.

"Perhaps you have hit it," he said with a laugh. "You can reach the Wall from here in a day's ride."

"The Wall?"

"The Roman Wall; Hadrian's Wall. I believe one authority states that they had a garrison of one hundred thousand men to keep it."

Chisholm joined the group. He was a tall, rather florid-faced man, with a formal manner, and was dressed immaculately in creaseless clothes.

"The point Wallace raises is interesting," he remarked. "While I don't know how long it takes for a strain to die out, there must have been a large civil population living near the Wall, and we know that the characteristics of the Teutonic peoples who followed the Romans still remain. On the other hand, some of the followers were vexillaries, from the bounds of the Empire; Gauls, for example, or Iberians."

When, later on, the group broke up, Evelyn was left alone for a few minutes with Mabel.

"Gerald should have been sent to Canada instead of to Oxford," the younger girl declared. "Then he might have got as rich as Wallace Vane and Mr. Carroll."

"What makes you think they're rich?" Evelyn asked with reproof in her tone.

Mabel grimaced.

"Oh, we all knew they were rich before they came. They were giving Lucy guineas for the suffragists an hour ago. They must have a good deal of money to waste it like that. Besides, I think Wallace wanted her to take some more; and he seemed quite vexed when he said he'd tried to give money to somebody else in Canada who wouldn't have it. As he said 'she,' it must have been a woman, but I don't think he meant to mention that. It slipped out."

"You had no right to listen," Evelyn retorted severely; but the information sank into her mind, and she afterward remembered it.

She rose when the sunshine, creeping farther across the grass, fell upon her, and Vane carried her chair, as well as those of the others, who were strolling back toward them, into the shadow. This she thought was typical of the man. He seemed happiest when he was doing something. By and by a chance remark of her mother's once more set Carroll to discoursing humorously.

"After all," he contended, "it's difficult to obey a purely arbitrary rule of conduct. Several of the philosophers seem to have decided that the origin of virtue is utility."

"Utility?" Chisholm queried.

"Yes; utility to one's neighbors or the community at large. For instance, I desire an apple growing on somebody else's tree—one of the big red apples that hang over the roadside in Ontario. Now the longing for the fruit is natural, and innocent in itself; the trouble is that if it were indulged in and gratified by every person who passed along the road, the farmer would abandon the cultivation of his orchard. He would neither plant nor prune his trees, except for the expectation of enjoying what they yield. The offense, accordingly, concerns everybody who enjoys apples."

Mrs. Chisholm smiled assent.

"I believe that idea is the basis of our minor social and domestic codes. Even when they're illogical in particular cases, they're necessary in general."

Evelyn looked across at Vane, as if to invite his opinion, and he knit his brows.

"I don't think Carroll's correct. The traditional view, which, as I understand it, is that the sense of right is innate, ingrained in man's nature, seems more reasonable. I'll give you two instances. There was a man in charge of a little mine. He had had the crudest education, and no moral training, but he was an excellent miner. Well, he was given a hint that it was not desirable the mine should turn out much paying ore."

"But why wasn't it required to produce as much as possible?"
Evelyn asked.

"I believe that somebody wanted to break down the value of the shares and afterward quietly buy them up. Anyway, though he knew it would result in his dismissal, the man I mentioned drove the boys his hardest. He worked savagely, taking risks he could have avoided by spending a little more time in precautions, in a badly timbered tunnel. He didn't reason—he was hardly capable of it—but he got the most out of the mine."

"It was fine of him!" Evelyn exclaimed.

"The engineer of a collier figures in the next case." Vane went on. "The engines were clumsy and badly finished, but the man spent his care and labor on them until I think he loved them. His only trouble was that he was sent to sea with second-rate oils and stores. After a while they grew so bad that he could hardly use them; and he had reasons for believing that a person who could dismiss or promote him was getting a big commission on the goods. He was a plain, unreasoning man; but he would not cripple his engines; and at last he condemned the stores and made the skipper purchase supplies he could use, at double the usual prices, in a foreign port. There could be only one result; he was driving a pump in a mine when I last met him."

He paused, and added quietly:

"It wasn't logic, it wasn't even conventional morality, that impelled these men. It was something that was part of them. What's more, men of their type are more common than the cynics believe."

Carroll smiled good-humoredly; and when the party sauntered toward the house, he walked beside Evelyn.

"There's one point that Wallace omitted to mention in connection with his tales," he remarked. "The things he narrated are precisely those which, on being given the opportunity, he would have pleasure in doing himself."

"Why pleasure? I could understand his doing them, but I'd expect him to feel some reluctance."

Carroll's eyes twinkled.

"He gets indignant now and then. Virtuous people are generally content to resist temptation, but Wallace is apt to attack the tempter. I dare say it isn't wise, but that's the kind of man he is."

"Ah! One couldn't find fault with the type. But I wonder why you have taken the trouble to tell me this?"

"Really, I don't know. Somehow, I have an impression that I ought to say what I can in Wallace's favor, if only because he brought me here, and I feel like talking when I can get a sympathetic listener."

"I shouldn't have imagined the latter was indispensable," laughed Evelyn.
"Is this visit all you owe Wallace?"

"No, indeed. In many ways, I owe him a good deal more. He has no idea of this, but it doesn't lessen my obligation. By the way, it struck me that in many respects Miss Vane is rather like her brother."

"Lucy is opinionative, and now and then embarrassingly candid, but she leads a life that most of us would shrink from. It isn't necessary that she should do so—family friends would have arranged things differently—and the tasks she's paid for are less than half her labors. I believe she generally gets abuse as a reward for the rest."

Then Mabel joined them and took possession of Carroll, and Evelyn strolled on alone, thinking of what he had told her.