For practical purposes, then, her choice lay between the managership under Mrs. Jerome and a "marriage of convenience" with M. St. Hilaire. Instinct, to be sure, pointed to another alternative in which the name of Robert figured in capital letters. But this was a romantic dream, a dream which her fancy might embroider but which her courage and common sense had to dispel. Thus, when instinct urged, "A little feminine beguilement will bring him swiftly to your feet," common sense rejoined, "You may elect life-long poverty for yourself; dare you inflict it on Robert?" Instinct could rear and curvet, it could champ the bit; but it was not in the saddle. As between the two available courses, she had vastly preferred the managership. She would have jumped at it when Mrs. Jerome first offered it, but for a tacit understanding with Henriette. What a pull on her affections the little girl exercised! In a moment of weakness, or rather of passionate disgust with Paulette’s, Janet had given her former pupil all but an outright promise to become her second mother. Yet, though the father’s proposal was a handsome one, full of concessions to Janet’s conception of a modern woman’s sphere, it was difficult to ignore the likelihood of a bitter conflict after the wedding. A conflict on the issue of these very concessions. For between the feudal traditions of a man like M. St. Hilaire and the equalitarian assumptions of a woman like herself, there was a great gulf fixed. Could it ever be bridged? Anyhow, Mrs. Jerome’s offer had blazed out the real path of independence for her, and no mistake. Or so she had thought. A dozen times of late she had been on the point of imparting her final decision to Henriette and facing Cornelia and M. St. Hilaire with it. Lack of courage had not restrained her. A very different consideration had given her pause. Might net her "past" prove a source of serious embarrassment to Mrs. Jerome’s work? The last two years had taught her something of the "chemical" methods of warfare, the "poison gas" attacks which the foes of progress did not scruple to adopt. Was it likely that the enemies of the women’s movement would lose the chance of wrecking Mrs. Jerome’s scheme by raising against her young manager the hue and cry of _immorality_, that cry with which a handful of knaves had so often brought a whole nation of fools and cowards to heel? None the less, good sense had suggested that if Mrs. Jerome could risk it, so could she. And she had at last nerved herself to a conclusive interview with M. St. Hilaire. It was no more than fair that after so much shilly-shallying, she should explain at first hand her definitive refusal.