"Yes, and I'm going on hurting it till I see that letter torn up! Now, Miss Mary!--listen to me--for once--I beg! You won't suppose I don't understand--now--what made you sit down to do this, and I--I needn't say I admire you immensely for feeling so. But--don't you see--if life's hard, it's not your doing, and if it's hardest on mothers, you can't change the conditions by a hair's-breadth, no matter what you do.... Why, if you were going to marry Donald, and go off to Wyoming, the break here would be just as bad, but you'd never think it wasn't right--you'd know that these were the terms and conditions of life. Oh, you know all that as well as I! You know the duty isn't from children to parents--no, I swear, it's from parents to children, every time. And your mother'll be the first to say so--you know that, too! You know, when you tell her you're thinking of doing this, she'll go down on her knees to beg you to take your youth--and your life--and be free--" He was deflected by one of Mary's normal level gazes, turned upon him. She said steadily:-- "How long have you been feeling this way?" "Ten years! And then--for about five minutes." "I had understood somehow--I don't know how exactly--that you always thought I should stay here." The young man felt a flush spreading upward toward his hair, but would not lower his eyes. "Perhaps I did have some such feeling--in a sort of--personal, illogical way. But if it's the last word I ever speak--you've destroyed the last shred of it." He rose abruptly, without intention. Nothing in the world was clearer to him than that he and his reactions mattered little to her now; yet the desire mounted in him to explain how it was never the thing itself, but always the feeling about it, that had seemed so important to him. However, the school-teacher, with a little definitive gesture of the arm he had released, spoke first:-- "Well, never mind! Don't argue with me, please. It's as over and done with as something last year--" But Charles, upon his unimagined task of persuading Mary to act as the Egoettes act, cried out: "No!--no! Argue! Why, d'you think I'll stand by and hold my tongue, while you sacrifice the great chance of your life, your particular dream--for a mere notion of _duty_! I say, and I've always said, that freedom--and the right to do your work--belong to you, if to anybody in the world! You've--" "Do you really suppose I've lain awake all these nights without learning what my own mind is?" Having stopped him effectually with this dry thrust, she went on in another manner, not controversial at all, rather like one speaking to herself. "And as for my freedom--that's not involved at all.... I was thinking just now that maybe this is just what freedom--responsible freedom--really is--means. It's having the ability and the desire and the fair chance to do a thing--_and then not do it_."