Anselm Lancaster laughed, but he shook his head. “Don’t you get to craving things too far beyond common human experience,” he warned her. “The fact that it is called _common_ experience means that it is the best lot for the majority. I’ll warrant that to your Nan her husband is an oracle of wisdom, and a fount of charm! She’s safe, too; remember that’s no small asset in marriage. The sort of marriage that you describe goes peacefully into old age, undiminished in satisfaction, while hundreds are shipwrecked around it which started out to a glorious fanfare of the trumpets of romance and unfounded idealization. However, I grant you that sort of life is not for you. You have outgrown your childhood comrades, the malnutritive food of little minds. You’ve been living at high speed for three years, Cicely Adair; you’ve left behind you the things of your childhood. Just how does all this apply to Miss Braithwaite’s appeal to you to come to her? I’d say that it made it most opportune.” “It does, oh, it does!” cried Cis. “It takes my breath away. To go back feeling that I’m wanted, maybe needed; that I’m to go to make a home there; that all that beautiful, helpful life for others will be my life; that I’ll read, think, learn, have Father Morley to guide me--Mr. Lancaster, I’ve spoken to you frankly, just as I always did. I’ve always felt that you would understand. You won’t think I was criticizing dear little Nannie? I’d give my head to be as good as she is; dear little soul, always putting me up, and herself down! But--I want Beaconhite, and what I had there. Tell me truthfully, is it right for me to go? Ought I go?” Anselm Lancaster let the car drop down to a low speed, and turned to look at Cis, with an expression on his face which, though she saw it clearly in the brilliant light of the interior of the car, she could not construe. “Yes, Cicely,” he said. “Truthfully I think that your place is there. I love Miss Miriam dearly; she is more to me than any of my kindred, more than any other friend. If it were only that you can be to her, now that she needs sustaining, what you can be would seem to me enough reason for your going, you who are entirely free to go and do as you will. She has been a real power for good, an instrument which has helped to carve out the way for others to follow her into the Catholic Church, and one whose charity has bridged many a poor wretch back into a possible manner of living when hope seemed over for him. What can you ask better than to repay some of the debt God’s children owe this woman? And you say that she has done much for you. I think that your place is in Beaconhite. If the decision rests with me, I say: Come! Thrice over: Come! And may all that lies ahead of you there, all that may come of it, be blessed and guided. How can I say aught else, save: Come?”