"And so you advise me to marry?" she said, rising too and trying to speak with a laugh. "No, ma'am!" with decision. "I ain't advising you to marry. I's just advising you not to give up marrying." "Well," with a little shrug, "it amounts to the same thing." "What you got to hurry for?" Tom returned to his old charge. "If I don't decide I can't stay where I am. There is Miss Wood one evening telling me to go on with my work--she loathes Dick--and Mrs. Pickens the next telling me to accept a good husband. That's what it's like when Dick's away, and it's a million times harder when he's around. I'll move if I give him up. "I met an old man this winter," she went on, "a friend of Kathleen's. He had a terrible philosophy, everything was going to the dogs. You'd have thought that the world would never get any better. But he said one thing to me. He told me to dance and have a good time and to be sure to keep out of the conflict. That was the way he put it, 'Keep out of the conflict.'" "That might be good advice if you could." "I suppose you could," Hertha said slowly, "if you made up your mind to; just to have an easy, comfortable time. Now Kathleen was always in the conflict. She was trying to change the world, to change everybody--at least everybody who was poor. And here I can't decide what to do with my own life." "It's a heap easier," Tom remarked meditatively, "to run other folks' lives than it is your own." They had walked down the aisle to the corridor and now stood by the closed door. "I haven't made my mind up yet about marriage," Tom said. "It's a great risk, it sure is. I was reading the other day about trial marriages. Seemed like that might not be a bad idea--each agree to try each other out for a time and then if things suited, match up for good." "Where did you read that?" Hertha asked, curiosity surmounting disapproval in her voice. "In the paper," was the all-sufficient answer. "It were only a suggestion." "_Was_, Tom." "Yes'm." "I'm afraid it's a suggestion that most people would think wicked," she gave a resigned sigh, "like divorce. Well, I'm glad we had this talk." "So am I," Tom made hearty response. "And that wasn't a bad idea, Hertha, to keep out of the conflict." "There's one thing I want you to promise me," the girl's thoughts turned from herself to her old home. "I want you to promise to let me keep in touch with you. You're nearer than the folks down South. Promise that you won't go away without my knowing." "Sure," he answered. "And one thing more, if you hear from them at home that any one is ill, or that they're going to move, you must let me know. I mean to write to them before long, I'm going to settle a lot of things in my mind when school's over, but I rely on you to let me know the news." "Yes." "It's a promise?" "Yes, Hertha, it's a promise."