"I shan't need her," Beulah said, prophetically. "I hoped she'd stand beside me in the work, but she's not that kind. She'll marry early and have a family, and that will be the end of her." "I wonder if she will," Peter said, "I hope so. She still seems such a child to me. I believe in marriage, Beulah, don't you?" Her answer surprised him. "Under certain conditions, I do. I made a vow once that I would never marry and I've always believed that it would be hampering and limiting to a woman, but now I see that the fight has got to go on. If there are going to be women to carry on the fight they will have to be born of the women who are fighting to-day." "Thank God," Peter said devoutly. "It doesn't make any difference why you believe it, if you do believe it." "It makes all the difference," Beulah said, but her voice softened. "What I believe is more to me than anything else in the world, Peter." "That's all right, too. I understand your point of view, Beulah. You carry it a little bit too far, that's all that's wrong with it from my way of thinking." "Will you help me to go on, Peter?" "How?" "Talk to my aunt and my mother. Tell them that they're all wrong in their treatment of me." "I think I could undertake to do that"--Peter was convinced that a less antagonistic attitude on the part of her relatives would be more successful--"and I will." Beulah's eyes filled with tears. "You're the only one who comes anywhere near knowing," she said, "or who ever will, I guess. I try so hard, Peter, and now when I don't seem to be accomplishing as much as I want to, as much as it's necessary for me to accomplish if I am to go on respecting myself, every one enters into a conspiracy to stop my doing anything at all. The only thing that makes me nervous is the way I am thwarted and opposed at every turn. I haven't got nervous prostration." "Perhaps not, but you have something remarkably like _idee fixe_," Peter said to himself compassionately. He found her actual condition less dangerous but much more difficult than he had anticipated. She was living wrong, that was the sum and substance of her malady. Her life was spent confronting theories and discounting conditions. She did not realize that it is only the interest of our investment in life that we can sanely contribute to the cause of living. Our capital strength and energy must be used for the struggle for existence itself if we are to have a world of balanced individuals. There is an arrogance involved in assuming ourselves more humane than human that reacts insidiously on our health and morals. Peter, looking into the twitching hectic face before him with the telltale glint of mania in the eyes, felt himself becoming helpless with pity for a mind gone so far askew. He felt curiously responsible for Beulah's condition.