For his _Fidelia_, as he described her, she exhibited a gentle affection, tempered by a compassionate pity for her weaknesses and waverings; an attitude, he fatuously told himself, forced upon her because her own standards were so much higher than any he could delineate or conceive. For _Joan_ there was also compassion, but it was mildly contemptuous. "If I did not know that you are incapable of doing such a thing, I might wonder if you are not drawing your _Joan_ from the life, Mr. Griswold," she said, a little coldly, on this same evening of rehabilitations. "Since such characters are to be found in real life, I suppose they may have a place in a book. But you must not commit the unpardonable sin of making your readers condone the evil in her for the sake of the good." "May we not sometimes condone a little evil for the sake of a great good?" he pleaded in extenuation. Her answer was rather disconcerting. "Life is full of just such temptations; the temptation to bargain with expediency. We can only pray blindly to be delivered in the hour of trial." They were sitting together on the vine-sheltered porch, and the street electrics with the lamplight from the sitting-room windows served merely to temper the velvety gloom of the summer night. He would have given much to be able to see her face, but the darkness came between. "That opens the door to the larger question which is always asking for its answer," he said, letting the thought that was uppermost slip into speech. "At its very best, life is a compromise, not necessarily between good and evil, but between the thing possible and the thing impossible. It is not until we are strong enough to break the shacklings of the traditions that we are free to drive the best obtainable bargain with destiny." As at other times, he was once more yielding to the impulse which was always prompting him to apply the acid test to the pure gold of the ideal. Heretofore the test had revealed no trace of earthly alloy; but now the result filled him with vague dismay. "So you have said many times before," she rejoined, and her voice was as the voice of one groping in the dark. "I--I have a confession to make, Mr. Griswold: I have held out against you, knowing all the time that you were right; that life is full of these bitter compromises which we are forced to accept. Please forget what I have said about your _Fidelia_ and--and your _Joan_. You are trying to make them human, and that is as it should be." Griswold could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. He told himself fiercely that he would never believe, without the convincement of fact, that the ideal could step down from its pedestal. "You are meaning to be kind to me now, at the expense of your convictions, Miss Charlotte," he protested warmly.