Mrs. Dowling was not perfectly sure about Cis, as Cis was sharp enough to perceive. She did not like her indifferent brand of Catholicity, but aside from that, she found nothing to condemn in the girl, or had not so far. “So far” summed up Mrs. Dowling’s attitude toward Cicely; when Nan told her mother that she knew no other girl so intrinsically upright and pure-minded, Mrs. Dowling always said: “I hope she is!” and Nan was helpless to defend Cis against a charitable hope, however dubiously expressed. Cis was too attractive to men to be wholly trustworthy, Mrs. Dowling felt, with the bias of the rather dull woman who has married the one man who ever noticed her. She could not understand the vivacity that drew others, combined with the nature that allowed no one to pass within definite barriers. Then young Tom Dowling, only a year and a half Cicely’s junior, found her far too charming; it was bad enough that Nan was her humble adorer, but Tom was another matter. Mrs. Dowling was one of the many women who mistake jealousy for love of their children. Down in the bottom of her heart, Mrs. Dowling felt sure that the act of Providence which removed Cicely Adair from her present field was easily understood, corroborative of her secret misgivings. Nan and Cicely were bedfellows that last night; like true girls they talked far into it of their views, their hopes, Cicely’s adventure, of Jeanette Lucas and the risks and promises of marriage. Cis declared that she did not want to marry, nor ever would marry unless there came into her life a man who so filled it that she would be maimed and crippled, lacking him. That man, she added, she did not believe existed. Cis felt self-sufficient, rejoicing in her ability to take care of herself. Nan, on the other hand, did not mind acknowledging that she thought that she could be quite fond enough of a man to marry him and be happy with him without a cataclysmic passion; he must be good, she added, like a wise little second Eve, because, chiefly, she hoped that she would have many children and she would want their father to be an example to them. Cis laughed aloud at this, and Nan smothered the laugh in the bedclothes, fearing to disturb her mother at one o’clock. “I don’t believe many girls pick out a man for the sake of their children; I’m dead sure I’d pick him for myself,” declared Cis. “I don’t care; they ought to,” maintained Nan stoutly. “How can you bring up children well if their father is bad? And if he’s a good father, he’ll make his wife happy. All women are first of all mothers of souls, like the first woman.” She admitted to Cicely’s gleeful questioning that she had derived this idea from a mission sermon; in return for which admission Cicely admitted that she had no doubt it was quite right; that she couldn’t object to it as long as she herself didn’t have to marry posterity’s ancestor.