And sitting on the floor at her grandmother's feet, regardless of Charlotte's crushed flounces, Sheila poured out her impetuous confession, from the first moment of temptation and yielding to the final one of Peter's awakening words. "And when he spoke of you, grandmother, I just couldn't _bear_ it! I wondered how I could have been happy at all--I wondered how I could have forgotten you for a minute! I hated the frock! I hated the party! And I hated myself most of all! I had to come home and ask you to forgive me right away!" And down went her head into Mrs. Caldwell's lap. "Do you---think--you can forgive me?" came the muffled plea. For answer Mrs. Caldwell bent and kissed the prostrate head, and it burrowed more comfortably against her knee. But Mrs. Caldwell did not speak. She was waiting for something, and when Sheila continued to burrow, in the contented silence of a penitence achieved, she inquired quietly: "Well, dear?" Sheila lifted her head at that, and looked straight into the wise, sweet eyes above her: "I wanted something! I wanted something dreadfully! And I didn't know what it was. And then, when I saw myself in Charlotte's frock--and so changed--I thought I'd found what I wanted. I thought--I thought I'd wanted to be beautiful!" "Yes," said Mrs. Caldwell gently, "I used to think that, too." "Oh, grandmother, did you? Then you understand how I felt! But--but, you see, it didn't last. I wanted to be good _more_. That's what made me come home. Grandmother, do you suppose _that's_ what I've wanted all the time, without knowing it--to be good?" At the question, Mrs. Caldwell, wise gardener that she was, realized that one of the flowers which she had divined, stirring in the depths of Sheila's being, was pushing its way upward to the light, and that the moment had come for her to help it. She slipped her arms around the girl kneeling before her, as if seeking in love's touch inspiration for love's words. "I think you will always want to be good," she said, "and I think you will always want to be beautiful. Women do, Sheila dear--even the women who are least beautiful and least--good. It's part of being a woman--just like loving things that are little and helpless. "But, Sheila, being beautiful isn't enough! Even being good isn't enough, though of course it ought to be. It's essential, but it isn't enough. Every woman must have something else besides to make her happy--something that is hers, _her own_! She must have that to be beautiful _for_, and to be good for--she must have that to live for! "And that is what you want, dear--the thing that is your own. You have been born for that--you cannot be complete or content without it."