meet, would she be better for him than all that? She? What question could be more penetrating? “It would be better for the child.” Would it be better for him? Sometimes it comes about that in the very midst of the happiness of life, with every sail full, and the sun shining, and the horizon clear, there comes a sudden catastrophe, and some young woman whose life has been that of the group of children at her knee, has suddenly to stop and stand by with dumb anguish, and see one and another taken away from her by kind friends, kindest friends! benefactors only to be blessed and praised! while all around her other friends congratulate her, bid her feel that she must not stand in the way of the children, of their real advantage! Is it to their real advantage? Is it better to be the children of kindness or the children of love? to be brought up in your own home or in another’s? Oh, poor little mother; often you have to smile out of your broken heart and bear it! Margaret Osborne had but one thing in the world; but she would have done like the others, and smiled and endured even to be severed from that only possession, had she been sure. Who can be sure? She said to herself that love, and his own home, and the ties of nature were best. And then Gerald Piercey’s words came back and stung her like fiery serpents: “A man’s career, under men’s influence, or----” Or what? A poor woman’s influence, a woman who was herself a failure, whom nobody cared much for under the sun. Which--which would be the best for Osy? This is the kind of argument that tears the heart in two. It is full of anguish while it is going on: and after the decision is made, it lays up poignant and dreadful recollections. If I had not done that, but the other--if I had not sent away my child into the careless hands of strangers; or, on the other hand, if I had not been so confident of myself; if I could but have seen how much better for him would have been the man’s influence, the man’s career!