In the invigorating presence of _Anna Mahr_, _John Vockerat_ begins to live, to dream and work. Another phase of him, as it were, comes into being; larger vistas open before his eyes, and his life is filled with new aspiration for creative work in behalf of a liberating purpose. Alas, the inevitability that the ideal should be besmirched and desecrated when it comes in contact with sordid reality! This tragic fate befalls _Anna Mahr_ and _John Vockerat_. Old _Mother Vockerat_, who, in her simplicity of soul cannot conceive of an intimate friendship between a man and a woman, unless they be husband and wife, begins first to suspect and insinuate, then to nag and interfere. Of course, it is her love for _John_, and even more so her love for her son's wife, who is suffering in silence and wearing out her soul in her realization of how little she can mean to her husband. _Mother Vockerat_ interprets _Kitty's_ grief in a different manner: jealousy, and antagonism to the successful rival is her most convenient explanation for the loneliness, the heart-hunger of love. But as a matter of fact, it is something deeper and more vital that is born in _Kitty's_ soul. It is the awakening of her own womanhood, of her personality. _Kitty._ I agree with Miss Mahr on many points. She was saying lately that we women live in a condition of degradation. I think she is quite right there. It is what I feel very often.... It's as clear as daylight that she is right. We are really and truly a despised and ill-used sex. Only think that there is still a law--so she told me yesterday--which allows the husband to inflict a moderate amount of corporal punishment on his wife. And yet, corporal punishment is not half as terrible as the punishment society inflicts on the Kittys by rearing them as dependent and useless beings, as hot-house flowers, ornaments for a fine house, but of no substance to the husband and certainly of less to her children. And _Mother Vockerat_, without any viciousness, instills poison into the innocent soul of _Kitty_ and embitters the life of her loved son. Ignorantly, _Mother Vockerat_ meddles, interferes, and tramples upon the most sacred feelings, the innocent joys of true comradeship. And all the time _John_ and _Anna_ are quite unaware of the pain and tragedy they are the cause of: they are far removed from the commonplace, petty world about them. They walk and discuss, read and argue about the wonders of life, the needs of humanity, the beauty of the ideal. They have both been famished so long: _John_ for spiritual communion, _Anna_ for warmth of home that she had known so little before, and which in her simplicity she has accepted at the hand of _Mother Vockerat_ and _Kitty_, oblivious of the fact that nothing is so enslaving as hospitality prompted by a sense of duty.