Onoria really wanted Elsie to be happy. She didn’t want her to grow up into a dull, lonely old woman with a pet animal. But it was hard to give her up to Peter. If Peter had only been a _man_! It wasn’t, Onoria assured herself, that she minded about her old relation to Peter. After all she never had valued it; still he was the only man it would have been any use Onoria’s minding. She despised Peter, and the worst of it was that Elsie, whom she loved, cared more for this Peter whom Onoria despised than she did for Onoria’s opinion of him. That was the sting of stings. Onoria had laid out Peter on the dissecting table of her wit over and over again before Elsie, and Elsie had connived at these spiritual post-mortems without a qualm, and all the while she planned this hideous treachery! Miss Strickland looked facts in the face: if she gave in, Elsie and Peter would come back to her. They would come gladly into her sphere again. There would be no bitterness and no reproaches. They would just—all three of them—settle down. But there would be one difference, one fatal difference to Onoria’s pride. They would both of them know that they had got the better of her. They would give her love and even respect, but it would never be “glad, confident morning” again. If they wanted something else which Onoria disapproved of their having, they would combine to get it. They might marry or not—Onoria was above the petty sting of wincing at the legal ceremony—but they would combine—that was what she winced at. She must choose once and for all. There are moments in life when choice is within our own hands—though they are very rare—when we can decide with the finality of an earthquake or a volcano what we intend to do with our future. Pride pushed Onoria into resistance and love drew her towards surrender. Love urged that she would be glad to see Elsie happy, that she could not want to hurt Elsie, that nothing but not hurting Elsie really mattered. Love is always immoral. It slays pride, it urges that law is only a letter and possession a bitter illusion of the senses, and that only Freedom—the freedom to serve the beloved—counts in the eternal scheme of things. Love ignored Peter Gubbins and how necessary it was to give him a lesson; it made specious excuses for Elsie’s flagrant treachery; it said “She only deceived you because she didn’t want to hurt you—she only disobeyed you to be happy, and after all that is what you want, isn’t it? You want Elsie to be happy?” Miss Strickland wavered under the pressure of love; but she only wavered. Righteousness and self-respect rose up afresh in her. Self-respect at the touch of which Love always dwindles out of sight and Righteousness which so often consists in carrying out our own will, in an imagined connection with the Deity.