“The man who said that was a true critic,” her father had remarked.  “Electric light?  Quite so.  In the absence of sunlight the electric light does extremely well for the requirements of the average man and woman.  Your critic said nothing about volts?”

That was how her father became irritating to her occasionally—­leading up to some phrase which he had in his collection of bric-a-brac.  “Volts!”

Yes, she felt that the sincerity of George Holland would alienate from him all the people who had previously held him in high esteem.  Although she was a daughter of Philistia, it had never occurred to her that there is such a thing as a succes scandale, and that the effect of such an incident in connection with the rector of a fashionable church rarely leads to his isolation.

She did George Holland more than justice, for she could not conceive his looking forward to a crowded and interested attendance at his church on the following Sunday and perhaps many successive Sundays.  She could not conceive his thinking what effect the noticing of such an attendance would have upon her.  To her, as to most girls, the heroic man is all heroic.  The picture of the Duke of Marlborough taking a list of the linen to be sent to the wash while his troops were getting into position for a great battle is one from which they turn away.  She could not think of George Holland’s calculating upon the effect of a crowded church, with newspaper reporters scattered throughout the building, taking down every word that might fall from his lips.  She regarded him as a man who had been compelled, by the insidious influence of what he called scientific thought, to write a shocking book; but one that he certainly believed was destined to effect a great reform in the world.  Her eyes had filled with tears as he stood before her with the gleam of martyrdom in his eyes, and for an instant she felt a woman’s impulse—­that was a factor which George Holland had taken into consideration before he had spoken—­to give both her hands to him and to promise to stand by his side in his hour of trial.  But she thought of Ruth and restrained herself.  Before he had reached the door she thought of him as the man from whom she had managed to escape before it was too late.

She wondered if any of those young women of the church, who had gone back to their butterfly garments on hearing that Mr. Holland had asked her to marry him, would hunt out the sober garments which they had discarded and wear them when they would hear that she was not going to marry Mr. Holland.

She rather thought that they would get new dresses and hats of the right degree of sobriety.  Fashions change so quickly between February and May.

And then there was the question of sleeves!

Anyhow they would, she felt, regard themselves as having another chance. 
That was how they would put it.

Only for an instant did she become thoughtful.  Then she sprang to her feet from the sofa on which she had thrown herself when her tears were threatening, and cried: