The street where Selina left the car was cool and dank between shabby brick stores and shabbier warehouses. It smelled of sugar and molasses and leather. The floor-space occupied by her father for fifteen years was in one of these buildings on the second floor.

Coming to it she went up the worn stairs by which this second floor was reached from the street, and, opening the glass-sashed door at the head of the staircase, came in on the long floor-space occupied with boilers, pumps, portable mills, what not, most of them second-hand. She went back through the long aisle between these to the office in the rear, which was shut off by a glass partition and overlooked an alley where, as she remembered it, drays drawn by mules forever stood being loaded or unloaded with heavy freight.

The door in this partition was open and through it she could see the interior of the office—two tall, shabby, sloping-topped desks, two tall stools one before either desk, two chairs, a stove and a strip of cocoa matting. That was the whole of it! That and her father and his general factotum, old Jerry, who was clerk, office boy, janitor, and, with some help from the outside for the lifting of machinery, porter. The whole of it, this, where her father for fifteen years had spent the larger part of his waking hours! And for the rest paid the bills Mamma made for the family, and played whist with a congenial group of his own sex once a fortnight! Husbands and fathers then did not always get a great deal out of it themselves!

Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too. And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!

They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was outside the doorway.

Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."

Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa! He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're right about it. I'm fogy and they want a hustler to represent 'em for a change. The question is—and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's getting out the books for us—can I make it a wind-up in any possible way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"

Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts, feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and came out into the dankness of the street.

They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to ask without his having to tell her.

It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her talk with him. Certainly carfare was to be considered. She'd walk home, walk and think.

Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man's son where she was a poor man's daughter, that son would have been prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of himself. A son long ago would have been at work.

Just what then is expected of poor men's daughters by the world they live in and are to exist by? What?

The answer came to her with staggering suddenness and illuminating clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will prevail!

Daughters are expected to solve their economic problems through marriage! Daughters have but the one business in life, which is to find husbands! Marriage as a solution for all her problems is a daughter's profession!

And if she fail? If she find no economic salvation for herself through a husband?

Rage, fury, shame, swept through Selina. The symbol of such failure stood piteously before her, Auntie! Auntie with a pittance doled out to her barely sufficient for her church dues and her few garments! Auntie stitching on fine muslin hands with no remuneration from any source for the perfection of those stitches, Auntie with all that magnificent endowment of perfect health and untiring energy that wasted itself so piteously in polishing brasses. Fury swept through Selina again, fury and resentment so hot they scorched and seared her. Say, for instance, that had Auntie been the man, and Papa the woman of the two of them?

Selina hurried along, one block, two blocks, three blocks, not that time pressed but that misery and indignation drove.

Then as she looked up and saw where she was, at the turn of a block where it touched on the courthouse neighborhood and the region of lawyers and their offices, she knew by prescience what was going to happen. Knew it with such certainty that her heart quickened and her breath caught even as a step came hurrying behind her, a cheerful voice as the steps drew nearer, spoke her name, and Culpepper, catching up with her, joined her.

"Our offices are in the second story back yonder. I saw you out the window as you went by."

He took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with one of those amazingly big and wonderful linen handkerchiefs Cousin Maria gloried in keeping him supplied with. In his vigor, his strength, his confidence, he was overwhelming. He towered above Selina. To surrender to masterfulness like his? To lose oneself through such dominance? Could she? And be at peace forever in the certainty of his care, and the knowledge the fight was his, not hers? It all were easy then if one could.

Culpepper's blue eyes bold through those black lashes, but softened by solicitude right now, scanned her face, then looked relieved.

"You know then?"

She nodded, pretty creature that she was, the wealth of her shining hair showing beneath her wreathed hat. "And you know?"

"I was round with Cousin Robert at the office last night, going over the books and the chances with him."

Here he waved a car. It was a belt line and went the long way round, but in its own good time would get them to their home neighborhood.

He led her out to the track, put her on the car, and followed. "How'd you know?" he asked as he sat down by her. "Cousin Robert told me he wouldn't mention it to any of you at the house till matters were decided."

"He ought to have told it at home from the start," she cried, and explained how she knew and they talked it and the situation at home over in their sorry details. Then she burst forth again, the more passionately that being here on the street-car, it must be restrainedly.

"Look at me, Culpepper? What am I? What am I fit for? What am I able to do as anything should be done? I've been given no way at all to earn my living. I've never been allowed to order a meal, or go to market to fit me even that way. I've never drawn a check, and I've never paid a bill. I'm past nineteen and at as pitiful a beginning as I was at sixteen."

She swallowed, looking ahead, her eyes fixed absently on the only other passenger in the car at the moment. Her profile thus was to Culpepper and he loved it. Fair and clear-cut and fine, he had loved it in her when she was a child.

She was seeing not the other passenger at all at whom she gazed so bitterly, poor man, but a grievance because of which she was passionately rebellious.

"You were made ready from the start, Culpepper; everybody concerned saw to it you were prepared. I'm hard about it. I'm resentful. I accuse—who or what is it I do accuse?" piteously. "Mamma? Papa? Conditions? The system? If there is any system for bringing up girls, and it isn't all just haphazard! And Culpepper, at home they're all so helpless! Mamma and Auntie! And Papa's so sensitive and is going to grow pitiful under this second failure and the having to take, as I suppose he will, some little clerkship, somebody'll be charitable enough to give him. It's up to me. And I want it to be up to me. You must see that the whole measure of what I'll ever be depends on my seeing right now that it is up to me. And, Oh, what way is there for me to meet it?"

He laid a hand on her arm and nodded abruptly toward the window. She followed his indicating nod and looked out. The car had turned into a residence street, and they were passing the house where Tuttle Jones made his home with his exceedingly well-to-do parents. Pompous and broad, and of comely stone was this home in its wide yard, its flower vases overflowing with bloom and color. But it was to something more pertinent than the Jones' house Culpepper with his nod referred.

Tuttle himself and his tally-ho were just wheeling in at the curb, and the groom at the back was leaping down. And if the whole, horses, tandem, coach, Tuttle himself in his belted dust-coat, groom breeched and booted, were more than a bit spectacular, one could rest easy in the knowledge that it was because in this case it was eminently the correct thing to be spectacular. Tuttle was arrived here at home, Selina judged, to get his mother, preparatory to gathering up the remainder of his party, herself among these.

"Tuttle will be by for me by the time we reach home, Culpepper. He's horrified that I haven't had my share in social experience as included in races."

The car jogged past, and as it came to the corner, the point nearest their own neighborhood, Culpepper rang the bell.

As they reached the pavement he spoke. His eyes were narrowed and he did not look at her. For the first time in their lives he was approaching a subject to her with entire seriousness.

"I reckon we'll have to allow it was coincidence offered me Tuttle and his circus wagon just now. What I meant was, honey, that the world and the system, as you call it, would point to Tuttle and tell you you've done everything and even more, expected of you. Catch my meaning?"

Did she? Her cheeks blazed. He was only corroborating what within the half-hour she had said for herself.

Culpepper was going on, still avoiding all look at her. "And I want to say further, honey, that Tuttle's a great chap, Tut's all right. I gave in when he showed what was in him by appreciating you." His eyes swept around to her here with mock challenge. "How's that my lady, for magnanimity toward a flaunting rival?"

She didn't pretend not to understand him. She was rising to honesty these days through a force within her which itself craved truth. Color, however, had surged to her face with a violence which the rose lining to the open parasol on her shoulder could not be held responsible for—a growing violence, which finally overcame her, and she stumbled.

His hand quick and sure, righted her little gesture.

She made a disclaiming with her head.

"The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.

He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight ahead.

"So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want. You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"

Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her white. A tremor went over her.

Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things. Can't comfort you, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five! Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"

Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb before it.

"As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must try, and quickly, before we get there, please."

Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.

But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet so obviously now, woman, too, through the child.

"Let me talk, please, Culpepper. Thank you for wanting me and for telling me. Though I don't believe you've ever realized that I've resented the way you've taken me for granted, you and Cousin Maria, and Auntie, and, yes, even Papa. But that's not what I want to speak about. It's this. There's no power in heaven or earth right now could make me marry either you or Tuttle! If he asks me to-day, and I won't hold him off any longer, I'll say so to him. When I come to marrying, I see it perfectly clearly and of a sudden to-day, it's going to be beyond any imagining or shade of possibility that's it's because it's a solution for me! I'm finding myself a little bit these days. I'm going to prove what I've found now. When I come to marry, it's going to be because I choose to give up independence to do it. How I'll get the independence I'm sure I don't know now, but I will get it," piteously. Then, "Culpepper, Oh, Culpepper," beseechingly as she turned toward him, a cry as from one bereft and needing help, "don't you see? Can't you see? Put yourself where I am, and understand for me!"

They were crossing the home corner now. Tuttle and his glittering show were wheeling in at the curb before the ugly little house. The neighborhood surreptitiously was at its windows. The breeched and booted groom had leaped down.

It was this Tuttle up on the box who wouldn't shame his God by meeting him with anything less than entire correctness. Selina would try not to fail this kindly Tuttle now.

"Coming," she called with pretty gayety to the company aloft as she came in speaking distance, with a lift and a flirt of her parasol before surrendering it to Culpepper for lowering.

Then to Culpepper imploringly. "Speak to Mamma and Auntie for me and reassure them about Papa, won't you, Culpepper? I'll have no chance."

The coach was stationary at the curb, and so by now were Selina and Culpepper. He was big and splendid; she was slim and fair. Greetings were pelting down on them, and Tuttle with an eye on his horseflesh had risen on the box.

"No," from Selina to Tuttle aloft, "don't get down. Or can Jehu on the box get down? Culpepper'll put me up. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, Mr. Haven, you all up there know Mr. Buxton? I've never mounted a coach before, and I'm horribly afraid I'll perpetrate what a friend of my youth, when she sprained her ankle, called a faux pas. Do give me your hand, Culpepper, and put me up?"

Blessed child!

And did her hand, as he took it, close on his for the instant, beseechingly as it were? Those soft fingers of hers cling to his? Hold to his as though loath to leave them?

He must have thought they did, for after he had put her up on the box to the place directed by Tuttle beside himself, pretty creature that she was, still tremulous but bravely gay with it to wring your heartstrings, this Culpepper made pretence of need for more care of her, and swinging up on the step to arrange her skirt from chance contact with any brake or such matter, whispered softly up in the vernacular he kept for her and ole Miss.

"Honey!"

And the while a chorus was chanting from the back seats, "Listen to us, Selina! Listen, Selina! Have you heard about Amanthus? Turn around and listen to us! Have you heard about Amanthus?"

And here Mrs. Jones, leaning forward, addressed herself to Culpepper down again on the curb. "Mr. Buxton I seem to remember that Mr. Tate is a friend of yours? Have you heard about Amanthus?"

The chorus resumed itself, arising from Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, and Mr. Haven behind Mrs. Jones.

"Go on."

"Don't keep 'em waiting."

"Tell 'em about Amanthus."

"Amanthus," said Mrs. Jones, "was married at St. George's in London, yesterday, to Mr. Cyril Doe. A cable from Mrs. Harrison to her bank, which is Tuttle's bank, came to-day."

Amanthus had lived up to her business in life!

The whip touched the leader, the coach wheeled, everybody waved, and Culpepper was left standing there.

Auntie called to him from the door. She had seen him from the window and come down. He went in to her there on the doorstep and put his arm around her and kissed her.

"Ole Miss, what do you suppose, I've just been given to cherish most of everything in the world?"

"Are you in earnest, Culpepper, or teasing? I never know. I'm a bit unstrung, and so's Lavinia, over this trouble, whatever it is, hanging over Robert. What is it that's been given to you to cherish?"

She spoke with concern.

"Don't you worry, ole Miss, it's mine for cherishing, not yours. You're no worry. You belong to another generation in daughters of Shiloh that did your dancing in your vineyard according to custom, and have nothing to reproach your past with. The daughters of Shiloh to-day are declining to dance, ma'am, and are plucking the grapes in the vineyard instead. I need your coddling and your comforting. A daughter of Shiloh, among the dancers and the grapes, has handed me for my cherishing fruit of her gathering called a point of view."

"Whatever do you mean, Culpepper? I never know when you're in earnest, or not?"

"She thinks she is, ole Miss, that fair young daughter of Shiloh. I don't know just what to think, myself!"

"Are you speaking of Selina, Culpepper?"

"Who else? Ole Miss, I love her so and I want her. Where'd she pick up this whim?"