than once before she went to bed, and even put it under her pillow as a comfort and defense against she knew not what, for the first time in her life she was afraid to open it and read the kind words.  That night she watched the moonlight creep along the floor, and heard the cocks crow at midnight and in the morning; the birds woke with the new day while she tried to understand the day that had gone, wondering what she must do and say when she faced the world again only a few hours later.

Sometimes she felt herself carried along upon a rushing tide, and was amazed that a hundred gifts and conditions to which she had scarcely given a thought seemed dear and necessary.  Once she fancied herself in a quiet home; living there, perhaps, in that very house, and being pleased with her ordering and care-taking.  And her great profession was all like a fading dream; it seemed now no matter whether she had ever loved the studies of it, or been glad to think that she had it in her power to make suffering less, or prevent it altogether.  Her old ambitions were torn away from her one by one, and in their place came the hardly-desired satisfactions of love and marriage, and home-making and housekeeping, the dear, womanly, sheltered fashions of life, toward which she had been thankful to see her friends go hand in hand, making themselves a complete happiness which nothing else could match.  But as the night waned, the certainty of her duty grew clearer and clearer.  She had long ago made up her mind that she must not marry.  She might be happy, it was true, and make other people so, but her duty was not this, and a certainty that satisfaction and the blessing of God would not follow her into these reverenced and honored limits came to her distinctly.  One by one the reasons for keeping on her chosen course grew more unanswerable than ever.  She had not thought she should be called to resist this temptation, but since it had come she was glad she was strong enough to meet it.  It would be no real love for another person, and no justice to herself, to give up her work, even though holding it fast would bring weariness and pain and reproach, and the loss of many things that other women held dearest and best.

In the morning Nan smiled when her aunt noticed her tired look, and said that the play had been a pursuit of pleasure under difficulties.  And though Miss Prince looked up in dismay, and was full of objections and almost querulous reproaches because Nan said she must end her visit within a day or two, she hoped that George Gerry would be, after all, a reason for the girl’s staying.  Until Nan, who had been standing by the window, looking wistfully at the garden, suddenly turned and said, gently and solemnly, “Listen, Aunt Nancy!  I must be about my business; you do not know what it means to me, or what I hope to make it mean to other people.”  And then Miss Prince knew once for all, that it was useless to hope or to plan any longer.  But she would not let herself be vanquished so easily, and summoned to her mind many assurances that girls would not be too easily won, and after a short season of disapproving silence, returned to her usual manner as if there had been neither difference nor dispute.