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“Oh, no! Oh, no! no! no!” she replied. Then, after a pause: “How did Marian take it?”

“She was a dear!” he said loyally, but with a sinking feeling at his heart. “She has never been so kind to me before.”

“Was she glad you were going to be a hero?”

He started. This was uncanny. But he felt resentment, too. “Marian is so fine,” he said a little stiffly. “She sees things in flashes. She looks through the—the ugly facts to the glory beneath them. I’m not a hero—I know it only too well; but Marian sees only the collective recognition that I and a thousand others are giving of—of—the existence of something deeper than facts—of an idea.” He shook his head, unable to express his thought, and uneasily conscious that he was defending Marian—not very well, either.

“My dear boy,” Mrs. Latimer returned, “please believe that I am not blaming Marian for anything. I recognize as clearly as you do all her fineness. Marian lives in a palace. And when you live properly in a palace, perfectly at home there, you have palatial thoughts. But, you see, I don’t live in a palace. I’m of coarser clay. You don’t know me very well, Stacey, but I know you, I think. And I felt I must see you for a few minutes.”