"There!" he exclaimed, with an air of whimsical impatience. "Now I've got so excited that I can't paint! That's what comes of having convictions." The struggle was over. He brushed all doubts and questions aside. There was but one thing to do, and, disagreeable as it might be, he must accept the situation. The mention of the word "duty" reminded him that he had long ago settled in his own mind the folly of being bound down by superstitions masquerading under grand names as ethical principles. The duty of self-preservation was above all others. He must defend himself, no matter if he did violate the principles by which fools allowed their lives to be narrowed and hampered. He would set himself to work upon Hubbard to-morrow, and get this unpleasant thing over. His sitter came down from the dais upon which she had been sitting, and held out her hand. "You have decided my life for me," she said, in a low voice, "and I thank you." Those who knew her perplexities had argued with her in vain; and this stranger, talking to his own inner self, had said the final word which had moved her to a conclusion they had not been able to force upon her. He looked up with a smile, as he pressed her hand, but he said nothing; refraining from adding, as he might have done truthfully,-- "And I have decided my own." XIII THIS "WOULD" CHANGES. Hamlet; iv.--7. Melissa Blake was growing paler in these days, worn with the ache of a hurt love. Since the night on which he had parted from her in anger, John had been to see her only on brief errands which he could not well avoid, and while he had made no allusion to the difference which separated them, it was evident that he still brooded over his fancied grievance. This phase of John's character, its least amiable characteristic, which marred it amid many excellent qualities, was not wholly unknown to Melissa. She was by far the more clear-headed of the two, and she understood her lover with much greater acuteness than he was able to bring to the task of comprehending her. It was from intelligent perception and not merely from the feminine instinct for making excuses, that she said to herself that John was worn out with the strain of burdens long and uncomplainingly borne; and she was, it might be added, near enough to the primitive savagery of the rustic New Englanders of the last generation, to find it perfectly a matter of course that a man should make of his womenfolk a sort of scapegoat upon whom to visit his wrath against the sins alike of fate and of his fellows.