Now began a phase of Kendall Ware’s life which was to continue for a matter of six weeks, a period full of conflict between anomalies, of indecisions, of procrastinations. There stood out high moments of happiness, and there were dark descents into unlighted realms of self-distrust. He questioned everything, doubted everything, and most especially did he doubt his own ability to weigh events and to choose between the better and the worse. He almost doubted if he had the power of choice and felt a dour leaning toward predestination. Much of this was self-deception, and conscious self-deception. He was becoming increasingly aware of a day when he would have to make a choice and reach a decision, but he was afraid of that day. He knew the choice was his, and could belong to no other individual or force. _He_ must choose. The event was in his keeping. Three major questions presented themselves: First, what was he going to do about Andree? Second, what was he going to do about Maude Knox? And, third, which was interwoven with the first, what about the vestibule of the Presbyterian church? Ken had not the least doubt that he loved Andree. That was the one sure fact in the whole confused mass. He loved Andree and Andree loved him. To many young men, perhaps to most, this alone would have answered all his questions. Perhaps the ordinary young man would have thought of nothing else, but, perceiving that Andree was essential to him, he would have taken her and made her his own in permanence with due forms of marriage. This would have been the natural step for youth to take—disregarding consequences and challenging the future. But Ken was not an ordinary young man. He was a young man who was afraid of the future, who had been brought up to know a lively fear of the opinion of the community among which he lived. “What will folks say?” was a question he had heard propounded from his earliest childhood, until the thing that “they” would say had assumed a place of importance in his affairs second to nothing. It had almost confused his perceptions of right and wrong, for, even as a small boy, it had been made to appear to him that his mother was not so much concerned with the righteousness of any given act as she was by the effect of that act upon her circle of neighbors. Undoubtedly this was a mistaken notion, but it had at least the color of truth.