“Well, mother,” answered Grace, “I didn’t take time to reflect, and I shouldn’t care whether I was right about him or not. I refused him because I didn’t love him. If I had loved him that would have been the only reason I needed to marry him. But all the duty in the world wouldn’t be enough without it. Duty? I am sick of duty! Let the other women who are trying to do something for themselves, take care of themselves as men would. I don’t owe them more than a man would owe other men, and I won’t be hoodwinked into thinking I do. As for the waste, the past is gone, at any rate; and the waste that I lament is the years I spent in working myself up to an undertaking that I was never fit for. I won’t continue that waste, and I won’t keep up the delusion that because I was very unhappy I was useful, and that it was doing good to be miserable. I like pleasure and I like dress; I like pretty things. There is no harm in them. Why shouldn’t I have them?” “There is harm in them for you,”—her mother began. “Because I have tried to make my life a horror? There is no other reason, and that is no reason. When we go into Boston this winter I shall go to the theatre. I shall go to the opera, and I hope there will be a ballet. And next summer, I am going to Europe; I am going to Italy.” She whirled away toward the door as if she were setting out. “I should think you had taken leave of your conscience!” cried her mother. “I hope I have, mother. I am going to consult my reason after this.” “Your reason!” “Well, then, my inclination. I have had enough of conscience,—of my own, and of yours, too. That is what I told him, and that is what I mean. There is such a thing as having too much conscience, and of getting stupefied by it, so that you can’t really see what’s right. But I don’t care. I believe I should like to do wrong for a while, and I _will_ do wrong if it’s doing right to marry him.” She had her hand on the door-knob, and now she opened the door, and closed it after her with something very like a bang. She naturally could not keep within doors in this explosive state, and she went downstairs, and out upon the piazza. Mr. Maynard was there, smoking, with his boots on top of the veranda-rail, and his person thrown back in his chair at the angle requisite to accomplish this elevation of the feet. He took them down, as he saw her approach, and rose, with the respect in which he never failed for women, and threw his cigar away. “Mr. Maynard,” she asked abruptly, “do you know where Mr. Libby is?” “No, I don’t, doctor, I’m sorry to say. If I did, I would send and borrow some more cigars of him. I think that the brand our landlord keeps must have been invented by Mr. Track, the great anti-tobacco reformer.” “Is he coming back? Isn’t he coming back?” she demanded breathlessly.