It was late in September, when she asked Arthur Weston to tell her how she could help "those awful women,"—as she called the poor creatures she had seen in jail. He had motored out to Lakeville for a cup of tea, and while they waited for the kettle to boil, they wandered off along the shore of the lake, and found a little inlet walled with willows, where they could sit on the beach and see nothing but the wrinkling flash of waves and a serene stretch of sky. They sat there, talking idly, and watching the willow leaves turn all their silvery backs to a hesitating breeze.

Weston listened silently to her plans for "getting busy" with prison reform—when she suddenly broke off:

"I don't see that the vote will do much."

He gave her an astonished look. "What! This from you?"

She nodded. "Of course I'm for suffrage, first, last, and all the time! But I'm sort of discouraged about what we can accomplish. Life is so big." The old cocksureness was gone. The pathos of common sense in Freddy made him wince. "But I've got to do something," she ended. "Miss Eliza told me I was selfish."

[Pg 281]

"Look here! I won't let Cousin Eliza call you names! I reserve that for myself."

She laughed. "You've done it, often enough."

Arthur Weston tickled the sleeping Zip and whistled.

"What do you suppose Laura told me the other day?" Fred said. "She said that 'no woman really knew what life meant unless she had a baby.' She said having a baby was like coming out of prison—because 'self' is a prison. Rather tall talk for little Laura, wasn't it?"

"Any of the great human experiences are keys to our prison-house," he said.

"True enough," she agreed; then, abruptly, her own great experience spoke: "Isn't it queer? I rather dislike Howard."

"It's unreasonable. He's the same old Howard—a mighty decent chap."

"He's not—what I supposed he was."

"Well, that's your fault, not his. You dressed him up in your ideas; when he got into his own clothes, you didn't like him. Howard never pretended to be anything he wasn't."

"Yes! Yes, he did!" she said, with sudden agitation. "He used to—listen to me."

"Good heavens, don't hold that up against him! Don't I listen to you?"

"Oh, but you never let me think you agree with me! I always know you don't."

"He agrees far more than I do."

"No," she said, with a somber look. "He just let me talk. He didn't care. The things that were real to me[Pg 282] weren't real to him. His real things were—what's happening now. The baby, and Laura. Is it so with all of you? Don't you ever care with your minds?"

He stopped tickling Zip, and looked out over the lake with narrowing eyes; after a while he said, gently:

"I think the caring with the mind comes second. When a man falls in love, the mind has nothing to do with it. Sometimes it reinforces the heart, so to speak; when that happens, you have the perfect marriage—which isn't awfully common. It's apt to be just the heart; which gets pretty dull after a while. But just the head is arid."

"He would have found just my head,—arid?" she pondered.

He looked straight at her, and said, quietly: "I think he would."

There was a long pause.

"Was it head, or heart, with you?" she said.

"It's both," he said.

She gave him a puzzled look: "Why, you don't mean that you care for that horrid Kate, still?"

He smiled, and looked off over the water.

"You are very stupid, Fred."

She was plainly perplexed. "I don't understand?"

"That's why I say you are stupid."

His face was turned away from her; he was breaking a dead twig into inch-long pieces, and carefully arranging them in a precise fagot on his knee; she saw, with a little shock of surprise, that his fingers were trembling.

"Why, Arthur!" she began,—and stopped short, the color rising slowly to her forehead. He gave her a quick look.

[Pg 283]

"Why!" she said again, faintly, "you don't mean—? you're not—?"

He laughed, opening his hands in a gesture of amused and hopeless assent. "I am," he said, and flung the tiny fagot out on the water.

Fred dropped her chin on her fists and watched the twigs dancing off over the waves. They were both silent; then she said, frowning, and pausing a little between her words as if trying to take in their full meaning:—"You are in love with me."

"Has it just struck you?"

"How could it strike me—that you would care for a girl like me!"

"Considering your intelligence, you are astoni............