The most tangible thing for him was an accent of sincerity in Vida which compelled her listener into an answering sincerity. He coveted the secret of that social power—the power of being and doing that. It rested down on a greater democracy than he had known—upon her sense of oneness with others, her feeling of non-superiority, her assumption: “You and I are fundamentally alike.” He wanted to be with her long enough to catch that feeling, to have and to use it, giving it forth in turn to others. What a power to fill his students with! The teacher in him craved that secret of living. He wanted it to transmit; he wanted it as seed to sow in a more human seminar than he had yet conducted. It meant scrutinizing, accepting and conveying the actual human truth about one’s own feelings and motives—without thought of whether they were or were not admirable. It meant the acceptance of one’s self as the most authentic human document—a desire and firm resolution not to embellish or in any way falsify that text in the mind of another. One couldn’t do that and continue to set one’s self up professor-like as an example to youth. The power could be exerted only by taking youth completely into his confidence. Only one’s real, uncensored thoughts and impulses as they sprang out of one’s own nature had that quality he sought. He felt that he needed the help of Vida, with her long habit of truthful self-revelation, in learning to read that intricate, much disregarded text—himself. In his new spirit he spoke to Mrs. Guthrie about the secret he wanted to acquire from Vida Martin, hoping to rouse in Anna a desire to acquire it for herself. But Anna Guthrie was not prepared to take John’s grouping of himself and her as two human beings who had something to learn from a third. She was hurt that her husband should find in another woman something valuable which she herself lacked, and she thought him perfectly brutal in the bald way he came out with it. Things like that which would hurt people ought to be concealed. She herself concealed such things. “Practising sincerity is like making a bargain,” Guthrie reflected. “It takes two. Not everyone is ready for it.” To Vida arriving with Clark for dinner, Mrs. Guthrie was conventionally gracious—a manner she put on as she took off the all-over apron which protected her next to best dress in the hot kitchen. The green young Bohemian girl there was chiefly useful to Mrs. Guthrie as a topic of heartfelt conversation. Vida avoided it by starting some talk with Lucy and Harold, aged ten and eight, who sat at a little table behind her. By the time she had them laughing Mrs. Guthrie’s prejudice began to thaw. Their father noted their expressiveness with Vida. “They get it too,” he reflected. “They’re more human than I’ve realized. Anna and I have had too much the ideal of a child as a little obeying machine.”