He was gazing at her with eyes that were burning and yet sullen and angry. "Women, I suppose, have got to have follies and fads to amuse themselves with. At any rate, they have them. Suffrage or bridge, it doesn't much matter, so long as it's not let really to interfere. If it begins to do that, we'll have to put a stop to it. Woman, I take it, was made for man, and she'll have to continue to recognize that fact. Good Lord! It seems to me that if we give her our love and pay her bills, she might be satisfied!" All having spoken, Hagar spoke. "I should like, if I may, to tell you quietly and reasonably why--" her eyes were upon her grandfather. "I wish to hear neither your excuses nor your reasons," said the Colonel. "I want to hear a retraction and a promise." Hagar turned slightly, "Grandmother--" "Don't," said Old Miss, "talk to me! When you're wrong, you're wrong, and that's all there is to it! Maria used to try to explain, and then she stopped and I was glad of it." Hagar leaned back in her chair and regarded the circle of her relatives. She felt for a moment more like Maria than Hagar. She felt trapped. Then she realized that she was not trapped, and she smiled. Thanks to the evolving whole, thanks to the years and to her eternal self pacing now through a larger moment than those moments of old, she was not by position Maria, she was not by position Miss Serena. Before her, quiet and fair, opened her Fourth Dimension. Inner freedom, ability to work, personal independence, courage and sense of humour and a sanguine mind, breadth and height of vision, tenderness and hope, her waiting friends, Elizabeth, Marie, Rachel, Molly and Christopher, Denny, Rose Darragh, many another--her work, the story now hovering in her brain, what other and different work might rise above the horizon--the passion to help, help largely, lift without thinking if it were or were not her share of the weight--the universe of the mind, the growing spirit and the wings of the morning ... there was her land of escape, real as the hills of Gilead Balm. She crossed the border with ease; she was not trapped. Even now her subtle self was serenely over. And the Hagar Ashendyne appearing to others upon this porch was not chained there, was not riveted to Gilead Balm. Next week, indeed, she would be gone. A tenderness came over Hagar for her people. All her childhood was surrounded by them; they were dear, deep among the roots of things. She wanted to talk to them; she longed that they should understand. "If you'd listen," she said, "perhaps you'd see it a little differently--" The Colonel spoke with harshness. "There is no need to see it differently. It is you who should see it differently." "It comes of the kind of things you've always read!" cried Miss Serena. "Books that I wouldn't touch!" "Yes, Maria was always reading, too," said Old Miss. For her it _was_ less Hagar than Maria sitting there....