"Kathryn, I cannot. I am--I wish that you could understand--I am stepping out into the dark. I must go alone." "That is absurd, Brace. Absurd." A baffled, desperate note rang in Kathryn's voice. It was not for Northrup, but for her first sense of failure. Then she looked up. All the resentment gone from her face, she was the picture of despair. "I will wait for you, Brace. I will prove to you what a woman's real love is!" So, cleverly, did she bind what she intuitively felt was the highest in Northrup. And he bent and laid his lips on the smooth girlish forehead, sorrowfully realizing how little he had to offer. A few moments later Northrup found himself on the street. The snow was falling thicker, faster. It had the smothering quality that is so mysterious. People thudded along as if on padded feet; the lights were splashed with clinging flakes and gleamed yellow-red in the whiteness. Sounds were muffled; Northrup felt blotted out. He loved the sensation--it was like a great, absorbing Force taking him into its control and erasing forever the bungling past. He purposely drifted for an hour in the storm. He was like a moving part of it, and when at last he reached home, he stood in the vestibule for many moments extricating himself--it was more that than shaking the snow off. He felt singularly free. Once within the house, he went directly to his mother's room. She was lying on a couch by the fire. In the shelter of her warm, quiet place Helen seemed to have gained what Brace had won in the storm. She was smiling, almost eager. "Yes, dear?" she said. Northrup sat down in the chair that was his by his mother's hearth. "Kathryn wanted to marry me, Mother, at once." "That would be like her, bless her heart!" "I could not accept the sacrifice, Mother." "That would be like you--but is it a sacrifice?" "It seems so to me." "You see, son, to many women this is the supreme offering. All _they_ can give, vicariously, at this great demanding hour." "Women must learn to stop that rubbish, Mother. We men must refuse it." "Why, Brace!" Then: "Are you quite, quite sure it was all for Kathryn, son?" "No, partly for myself; but that must include and emphasize Kathryn's share." "I see--at least I think I do." "But you have faith, Mother?" "Yes, faith! Surely, faith." After a silence, broken only by the sputtering of the fire and that soft, mystic pattering of the snow on the window glass, Northrup asked gently: "And you, Mother, what will you do? I cannot bear to think of you waiting here alone." Helen Northrup rose slowly from the couch; her long, loose gown trailed softly as she walked to the fireplace and stood leaning one elbow on the shelf. "I'm not going to--wait, dear, in the sense you mean. I'm going to work and get ready for your return." "Work?" Northrup looked anxious. Helen smiled down upon him.