So long as the visit in Dunport seemed to fulfill its anticipated purpose, and the happy guest was throwing aside her cares and enjoying the merry holiday and the excitement of new friendships and of her uncommon position, so long the doctor had been glad, and far from impatient to have the visit end.  But when he read the later and shorter letters again and again in the vain hope of finding something in their wording which should explain the vague unhappiness which had come to him as he had read them first, he began to feel troubled and dismayed.  There was something which Nan had not explained; something was going wrong.  He was sure that if it were anything he could set right, that she would have told him.  She had always done so; but it became evident through the strange sympathy which made him conscious of the mood of others that she was bent upon fighting her way alone.

It was a matter of surprise, and almost of dismay to him early one morning, when he received a brief note from her which told him only that she should be at home late that afternoon.  It seemed to the wise old doctor a day of most distressing uncertainty.  He tried to make up his mind to accept with true philosophy whatever decision she was bringing him.  “Nan is a good girl,” he told himself over and over again; “she will try to do right.”  But she was so young and so generous, and whether she had been implored to break the old ties of home life and affection for her aunt’s sake, or whether it was a newer and stronger influence still which had prevailed, waited for explanation.  Alas, as was written once, it is often the higher nature that yields, because it is the most generous.  The doctor knew well enough the young girl’s character.  He knew what promises of growth and uncommon achievement were all ready to unfold themselves,—­for what great uses she was made.  He could not bear the thought of her being handicapped in the race she had been set to run.  Yet no one recognized more clearly than he the unseen, and too often unconsidered, factor which is peculiar to each soul, which prevents any other intelligence from putting itself exactly in that soul’s place, so that our decisions and aids and suggestions are never wholly sufficient or available for those even whom we love most.  He went over the question again and again; he followed Nan in his thoughts as she had grown up,—­unprejudiced, unconstrained as is possible for any human being to be.  He remembered that her heroes were the great doctors, and that her whole heart had been stirred and claimed by the noble duties and needs of the great profession.  She had been careless of the social limitations, of the lack of sympathy, even of the ridicule of the public.  She had behaved as a bird would behave if it were assured by beasts and fishes that to walk and to swim were the only proper and respectable means of getting from place to place.  She had shown such rare insight into the principles of things; she had even seemed to him, as he watched her, to