A result of this misunderstanding was an amusing game of cross-purposes between mother and daughter. Agnes was always throwing us together, scarcely attempting to veil her wishes, while Mrs. Blodgett, thinking that I did not care for you, was always interfering to save me from your society. She proposed that I should teach Agnes chess, and left us playing; but when you joined us, Agnes insisted that she could learn more by watching us, only to play truant the moment you had taken her place. I shall never forget Mrs. Blodgett’s amazement and irritation, on her return, at finding us playing, and Agnes not to be seen. Equally unsuccessful was an attempt to teach Agnes fencing, for she grew frightened before the foils had really been crossed, and made you take her place. At first I imagined she only pretended fear, but Mrs. Blodgett became so very angry over her want of courage that I had to think it genuine. When we went to drive as a party there was always much discussion as to how we should sit; and in fact my two friends kept at swords’ points most of the time, in their endeavors to make me tolerate or save me from the companionship of the woman I loved. Even I could see the comedy of the situation. In one of our conversations you reverted to your novel, and questioned my view of the impossibility of the heroine being happy in her marriage, evidently influenced, but not convinced, by my opinion. “To me it is perfectly conceivable,” you argued, “that, regardless of her loving, a woman can be as happy married as single, and that it all depends upon what she makes of her own life.” “But in marriage,” I contended, “she is not free to make her life at all.” “Surely she is if her husband truly loves her.” “Less so than if he does not.” “You are not in earnest?” “Yes. Love makes women less selfish, but with many men it often has the opposite effect. The man you drew, Miss Walton, was so firm that he would not be other than selfish, and if my reading of your heroine is correct, she was a woman who would resign her own will, rather than lower her self-respect by conflicts with her husband.” “But he loved her.” “In a selfish man’s way. If women knew better what that meant, there would be fewer unhappy marriages.” “Then you are sure my heroine did wrong?” “I think she did what thousands of other women have done,—she married the love rather than the lover.” “No. I did not intend that. She married for quite other things than love: for greater freedom, for”— “Would she have married,” I interrupted, “if she had not been sure that the hero loved her?” You thought an instant, and then said, “No, I suppose not—and yet”—You stopped, and then continued impulsively, “I wonder if I shall shock you very much if I say that I have no faith in what we call love?” “You do not shock me, Miss Walton, because I do not believe you.”