And then, seated under the lamp Wallie Flower had so skillfully repaired, he turned to page 1, intent upon getting this other fellow's heroine, and her Career, at the point of origin. The _Twexhams_, he learned, lived quietly, thirty miles from London. (Their address, if it is of the smallest interest, was Fernleigh Cottage, the Priory, Dean's Highgate, Lower-Minter-on-the-Mavern, Essex.) _Marna Twexham_ had the striking beauty conventional among the Freewomen of fiction. Having had a year at college, attended several gatherings in the Redmantle Club vein, and read three or more books in which unmarried women told the truth about Life, she inevitably reached the conclusion that it was her duty to make herself free. Put in another way, she saw that it was her duty to go to London. For, of course, "young women of genius" understand perfectly that freedom is a matter of geography, a metropolitan consummation, as we might term it, and would properly smile at the antediluvian who maintained that people can be free in the suburbs, if they can be anywhere. Thus _Marna_ smiled at the old fogey, her father, who opposed her going to London to be free. It seemed that the old chap, for reasons Charles could not fathom, actually wanted to keep the girl with him. "There are dangers in London that a good woman knows nothing of," he said, warningly; but _Marna_ eyed him so knowingly that he changed his tune at once. "You are all we have left, Marny dear," he wheedled. "Don't go away from us--yet, at any rate." "Why is it assumed that a woman who does not choose to marry is _left_?" asked the wise strong girl; and while her father scratched his head over this poser, she continued, firm but kind: "Really, you know, Dad, the idea that people have got to spend their lives together merely because of an accidental birth relation--really, you know, all that's jolly well played out. We've proved quite too awfully much about the beastly repressive influence of the family-tie." "But your sister!--poor invalid Muriel!" pleaded old _Twexham_. "She loves you so much, she so dependent on you! It will kill her to--" _Marna's_ smile, checking his maundering, was a great credit to her self-control (the author said). To set up playing checkers with a neurasthenic spinster, against a soul's sacred duty to itself and mankind! "Can't you really see, Dad," she said, quite patiently, "that a trained nurse can look after my sister much more efficiently than I can?" "It isn't that--exactly," faltered the moss-back parent. "It's your love she needs. And--I feel that you _do_ belong to us, Marny dear! I feel that--" "No, father," replied the glorious creature, gazing out the oriel window, over the terrace, rose-garden, etc., and into the morning sun. "I belong--out there! Such small abilities as I may possess," said _Marna_ with exquisite modesty, "belong to the Race. Such small contributions as I may be able to make to the thought of my time, I dare not withhold. I cannot be weakly