To that stanch speech he made no reply: perhaps he did not hear it. Winter dusk had crept quickly into the pretty sitting-room. The tall figure motionless by the little desk grew perceptibly dimmer. That understanding Charles spoke of had come upon him by successive shocks, each violent in its way. His had been the mere mad sense of a world too suddenly swung upside down, of the individual himself left standing brilliantly on his head. That had been just at first; and then perception had slid into him like a lance, and his feet had struck the solid ground with a staggering jolt. It was as if, at a word, all the supporting fabrications of his mind had turned to thin air, and out he fell headlong, at last, upon the real and the true. And this real and this true was Mary Wing, nothing else, standing where she had always stood; Mary, his best old friend, whom he had given his back to, belabored with harsh words, while she struggled at the crossroads of her life--to this. Now contrition, now humbleness had shaken the young authority, a poignant conviction of his failure, in understanding and in friendship. And then she spoke again, making it all quite perfect with simple words that he himself, in a dream, might have shaped and put into her mouth. _I wasn't willing to leave mother._ And after that, it seemed that nothing about himself could possibly matter in the least. "You know," he said, quite naturally, out of the small silence, "I think it's beautiful that a girl like you can feel this way--a girl with your abilities--your usefulness and splendid success--and now this magnificent oppor--" "Don't!--please don't! I hadn't meant to speak of it at all. I--we won't discuss it, please." She spoke hastily, pushing back the papers she had been pretending to arrange, starting to rise. But that word or that movement seemed to galvanize the still Charles into the suddenest life. "_Discuss it!_" he cried, in a new voice. "Why, we're going to have the greatest discussion you ever heard!" For perhaps the strangest part of this destructive upheaval was that it seemed to leave every idea he had ever had about this Career completely reversed. One word from Mary Wing about not leaving her mother, and nothing seemed to matter but that she, in her fine recklessness, should not be allowed to sacrifice her triumph and her life. "No!--please! It's settled now. And it only makes--" But her friend, the authority, had flung himself into the chair beside her, like an excited boy, and he seized her wrist on the desk-leaf in an arresting grip. "No, it isn't settled till it's settled right!--don't you know that? Is this your letter to Ames here? Let me tear it up for you now! Refuse the appointment! Why, Miss _Mary_! You can't think of such a thing! You!--a worker with a mission--and this your great call!--your big opportunity--your _duty_! Yes, your--" She interrupted his flowing modernisms to say, quite patiently: "You're hurting my wrist."