"You think that, David? You are not trying to comfort me?" Martin got up. He seemed suddenly in a hurry to be off. He had given what he could to meet Doris's need--given it briefly, concisely, as was his way. Doris brought his coat and held it for him--her face lifted to his with that yearning in her eyes that always unnerved him. It was the look of one who must offer an empty cup to another who thirsted. Then she spoke, after all the silent years: "David, I have always loved you, but I am beginning to understand at last about love. I had not the 'call' in my soul. Merry had it, the mountain mother had it--but it never came to me. Without it, I dared not offer to pay the cost of marriage. That would have been unjust to you. I did realize that, but the deeper truth has only come recently. I wonder if you can understand, dear, if I say now, even _now_, that I would be glad for you to marry and be happy--as you should be?" "Doris, I counted that all up years ago. It did not weigh against you!" Martin's voice was husky. "Then, David, be my friend and the friend of my little children. For their sakes, I implore your help along the way." Martin bent and touched his lips to Doris's head which was bowed before him. "Thank you," he said with infinite tenderness; "you are permitting me to share all that you have, my dear. Good-night." CHAPTER VII "_To do our best is one part, but to wash our hands smilingly of the consequences is the next part, of any sensible virtue._" In much that frame of mind, Doris arose the day following Martin's call. By some subtle force the debris of the past seemed to have been disposed of; the misunderstanding on her part and David's. "It is the 'call' that makes everything possible or tragically wretched," she said, "and one cannot be blamed for being born deficient. Thank God I fitted in, though, when others were called away." With David's understanding and cooeperation the present could be confronted and the "hand washing of consequences" undertaken. "I have done my best," Doris felt sure of this, "_my_ best, and now I must do a bit of trusting. It has been my one daring adventure. It must not fail." After many attempts she wrote and dispatched a letter to George Thornton, simply stating that she was about to send the children to school. While waiting for his reply she turned her attention to Mary, for in any case, she decided, the children must be placed in another's care. What Mary felt when Doris explained things to her no one was ever likely to know. The girl's face became blanker; the lines stiffened. "It was," Doris confided later to Martin, "as if I were wiping the past out as I spoke." The fact was that Doris was rekindling the past--the past that lay back of the years of plain duty.