"Do you see?" she queried. "Can you go to him, and live with him, as wife?" Kathryn made no answer. Again Elinor shook her head, gently. "Don't you understand," she asked. "It's compromise on compromise-- hedging on hedging. Can't you see how impossible it all is? ... how utterly impossible?" Torn of anguish, of inability to solve the problems that God had laid before her, Kathryn turned beseeching eyes to her sister. "But what shall I do, Nell?" she asked, beseechingly. "What can I do.... Wasn't it hard enough, even that way?" Elinor replied, gently: "Too hard. I want to make it easier. I want you to leave him irrevocably. Then you can forget him; but not until then." Kathryn was silent. "What does Tom say?" she asked, at length. She had learned to depend much upon the big-bodied, big-hearted, big-minded friend of late. "I haven't asked him," returned her sister. "But I will, now." She rose, quickly, and went to the rose-strewn arbor-way. She could see Blake, out upon the broad lawn, playing with the child that he loved, boyish, natural, whole-souled, with all the enthusiasm unspoiled that God gives not to many who are grown. "Tom!" she called. "Yes?" he answered. "Will you come here, to us, for a moment? Let Muriel stay with Mawkins." "Right, oh!" he called, cheerily. In another moment he stood in the opening of the arbor, hair rumpled, clothing awry. "Well?" he asked, inquiringly. Elinor began, slowly: "Tom, Kate and I have been talking, seriously. I want her to leave John Schuyler--legally leave him--leave him for all time. It's the only fair-- the only right--thing to do. I'm not going to argue. It is all sufficiently plain. She can't live with him; and yet, as long as she is his wife, she has no right to be away from him. And she can never go to him." "She wants your opinion, Tom," she went on. "She's always respected your judgment more than mine--more than that of anyone save the man upon whom she may never depend again." Kathryn had wandered to where the white blooms clustered thickest. She was thinking--thinking deeply, bitterly. Elinor drew closer to Blake. "I like you, Tom," she said, softly. "You're a good man--a decent man--a clean man--and they're mighty scarce these days.... All that Kate may have owed to John Schuyler, she long since paid to the last sad penny.... All your life you have been paying the things that you did not owe.... There is happiness, somewhere; a happiness that can be found." She thrust out her hand. "Tell her what to do," she said. "Tell her the right thing to do--the thing that should be done." And she turned on her heel, and went away.