"You must never mention such a thing as this again." Her words came stumblingly and her usually firm and strong hands trembled badly. "With my health in its present condition I couldn't get on without you. You are all I have to really love, and I need you. Don't you see what you have done? You have made me ill. Ill!" She was strangely upset and in her eyes was a confused and frightened look that was new to them, and quickly I went toward her, but she motioned me away. "Give me my medicine, and don't ever speak of such a thing again--such a thing as you have just spoken of! You have always been beyond my comprehension." She swallowed the medicine I brought her in nervous gulps, the tears running down her face as they might have done down a child's, but she would not let me do anything for her, insisting only that she wanted to be quiet. Seeing it was best to leave her, I went to my room and locked the door, and for hours I fought the hardest fight of my life. The one weapon she knew she could use effectively, she had used. If she needed me I could not leave her, but her complete self-reliance made it difficult to feel that any one was necessary to her. I was indignant at the way she had treated me. I was not a child to be disposed of, and yet of my future she was disposing as though it were a thing that could be tied to a string, and untied at will. Were she well and strong, I would take matters in my own hands and make the break. Surely I could do something! I had no earning capacity, but other women had made their way, and I could make mine. If she were perfectly well-- But she was not well. Through those first hours, and through most of the hours of the night that followed, the knowledge of the insidious disease that was hers was the high, hard wall against which I struck at every turn of thought, at every possibility at which I grasped, and in the dawn of a new day I knew I must not go away. It was not easy to surrender. Always my two selves are fighting and I wanted much to know more of life than I could know in the costly shelter, controlled by custom and convention, wherein I lived. I had long been looking through stained glass. I was restless to get out and see clearly, to know all sorts of people, all conditions of life, and the chance had seemed within my grasp--and now it must be given up. There are times when I am heedless of results, when I am daring and audacious and count no cost, but that is only where I alone am concerned. When it comes to making decisions which affect others I am a coward. I lack the courage to have my own way at the expense of some one else; and though through the night I protested stormily, if inwardly, that I was not meant for gilded cages, but for contact, for encounter, I knew I should yield in the end.