Mr. Murray reflected a few minutes, standing with his back to the fire and gazing at his wife.  Then he said:  “Sarah, you are a clever woman.  If you would come into my office and work steadily, you could double my income at the bar; but you need practice; your points are too fine; you run too many risks, and no male judge would ever support your management of a case.  As practice I grant you it is bold and has much to recommend it, but in the law we cannot look so far ahead.  Now, why won’t you let Esther marry George?”

“I shall practice only before women judges,” replied Mrs. Murray, “and I will undertake to say that I never should find one so stupid as not to see that George is not at all the sort of man whom a girl with Esther’s notions would marry.  If I tried to make her do it, I should be as wrong-headed as some men I know.”

“I suppose you don’t mean to put yourself in George’s way, if he asks her,” inquired Mr. Murray rather anxiously.

“My dear husband, there is no use in thinking about George one way or the other.  Do put him out of your head!  You fancy because Esther seems bright this morning, that she might marry George to-morrow.  Now I can see a great deal more of Esther’s mind than you, and I tell you that it is all we can do to prevent her from recalling Mr. Hazard, and that if we do prevent it, we shall have to take her abroad for at least two years before she gets over the strain.”

At this emphatic announcement that his life was to be for two years a sacrifice to Esther’s love-affairs, Mr. Murray retired again to his window and meditated in a more subdued spirit.  He knew that protest would avail nothing.

Meanwhile the two girls were already down on the edge of the icy river, talking at first of the scene which lay before their eyes.

“Think what the Greeks would have done with it!” said Wharton.  “They would have set Zeus in a throne on Table Rock, firing away his lightnings at Prometheus under the fall.”

“Just for a change I rather like our way of sticking advertisements there,” said Catherine.  “It makes one feel at home.”

“A woman feels most the kind of human life in it,” said Esther.

“A big, rollicking, Newfoundland dog sort of humanity,” said Strong.

“You are all wrong,” said Catherine.  “The fall is a woman, and she is as self-conscious this morning as if she were at church.  Look at the coquetry of the pretty curve where the water falls over, and the lace on the skirt where it breaks into foam!  Only a woman could do that and look so pretty when she might just as easily be hideous.”

“It is not a woman!  It is a man!” broke in Esther vehemently.  “No woman ever had a voice like that!” She felt hurt that her cataract should be treated as a self-conscious woman.

“Now, Mr. Wharton!” cried Catherine, appealing to the artist:  “Now, you see I’m right, and self-consciousness is sometimes a beauty.”