"I've not made anything less joyful or less peaceful for you by speaking?"

"No, no, dear. It's only that I couldn't think of it, for some time yet."

"You promise me that, meanwhile, you will think of me, as your friend, just as happily as before?"

"Just as happily, dear Jack; I could never, as long as you are you and I am I, think of you in any other way." And she went on, with her tranquil radiance of aspect, "I have always meant, you know, to make something of my life before I chose what to do with it."

Jack, too, thought Imogen's life a flower so precious that it must be placed where it could best bloom; but, feeling in her dispa.s.sionateness a hurt to his hope that it would best bloom in his care, he asked: "Mightn't the making something of it come after the choice, dear?"

Very clear as to what was her own meaning, Imogen shook her lovely, unconfused head. "No, only the real need could rightly choose, and one can only know the real need when one has made the real self."

These were Jack's own views, but, hearing them from her lips, they chilled.

"It seems to me that your self, already, is very real," he said, smiling a little ruefully. And Imogen now, though firm, was very wonderful, for, leaning to him, she put for a moment her hand on his and said, smiling back with the tranquil tenderness: "Not yet, not quite yet, Jack; but we trust each other's truth, and we can't but trust,--I do, dear Jack, with all my heart,--that it can never part us."

He kissed her hand at that, and promised to trust and to be patient, and Imogen presently lifted matters back into their accustomed place, saying that he must help her with her project for building a country home for her crippled children. She had laid the papers before him and they were deep in ways and means when a sharp, imperious scratching at the door interrupted them.

Imogen's face, as she raised it, showed a touch of weary impatience.

"Mamma's dog," she said. "He can't find her. Let him scratch. He will go away when no one answers."

"Oh, let's satisfy him that she isn't here," said Jack, who was full of a mild, though alien, consideration for animals.

"Can you feel any fondness for such wisps of sentimentality and greediness as that?" Imogen asked, as the tiny _griffon_ darted into the room and ran about, sniffing with interrogative anxiety.

"Not fondness, perhaps, but amused liking."

"There, now you see he will whine and bark to be let out again. He is as arrogant and as troublesome as a spoilt child."

"I'll hold him until she comes," said Jack. "I say, he is a nice little beast--full of grat.i.tude; see him lick my hand." He had picked up the dog and come back to her.

"I really disapprove of such absurd creatures," said Imogen. "Their very existence seems a wrong to themselves and to the world."

"Well, I don't know." Theoretically Jack agreed with her as to the extravagant folly of such morsels of frivolity; but, holding the _griffon_ as he was, meeting its merry, yet melancholy, eyes, evading its affectionate, caressing leaps toward his cheek, he couldn't echo her reasonable rigor. "They take something the place of flowers in life, I suppose."

"What takes the place of flowers?" Mrs. Upton asked. She had come in while they spoke and her tone of kind, mild inquiry slightly soothed Jack's ruffled sensibilities.

"This," said he, holding out her possession to her.

"Oh, Tison! How good of you to take care of him. He was looking for me, poor pet."

"Imogen was wondering as to the uses of such creatures and I placed them in the decorative category," Jack went on, determined to hold his own firmly against any unjustifiable claims of either Tison or his mistress. He accused himself of a tendency to soften under her glance when it was so kindly and so consciously bent upon him. Her indifference cut him and made him hostile, and both softness and hostility were, as he told himself, symptoms of a silly sensitiveness. The proper att.i.tude was one of firmness and humor.

"I am afraid that you don't care for dogs," Mrs. Upton said. She had gone back to her seat, taking up her work and pa.s.sing her hand over Tison's silky back as he established himself in her lap.

"Oh yes, I do; I care for flowers, too," said Jack, folding his arms and leaning back against the table, while Imogen sat before her papers, observant of the little encounter.

"But they are not at all in the same category. And surely," Mrs. Upton continued, smiling up at him, "one doesn't justify one's fondness for a creature by its uses."

"I think one really must, you know," our ethical young man objected, feeling that he must grasp his latent severity when Mrs. Upton's vague sweetness of regard was affecting him somewhat as her dog's caressing little tongue had done. "If a fondness is one we have a right to, we can justify it,--and it can only be justified by its utility, actual or potential, to the world we are a part of."

Mrs. Upton continued to smile as though she did not suspect him of wishing to be taken seriously. "One doesn't reason like that before one allows oneself to become fond."

"There are lots of things we must reason about to get rid of," Jack smiled back.

"That sounds very chilly and uncomfortable. Besides, something loving, pretty, responsive--something that one can make very happy--is useful to one."

"But only that," Imogen now intervened, coming to her friend's a.s.sistance with decision. "It serves only one's own pleasure;--that is its only use.

And when I think, mama darling, of all the cold, hungry, unhappy children in this great town to-night,--of all the suffering children, such as those that Jack and I have been trying to help,--I can't but feel that your petted little dog there robs some one."

Mrs. Upton, looking down at her dog, now asleep in a profound content, continued to stroke him in silence.

Jack felt that Imogen's tone was perhaps a little too rigorous for the occasion. "Not that we want you to turn Tison out into the streets," he said jocosely.

"No; you mustn't ask that of me," Valerie answered, her tone less light than before. "It seems to me that there is a place for dear unreasonable things in the world. All that Tison is made for is to be petted. A child is a different problem."

"And a problem that it needs all our time, all our strength, all our love and faith to deal with," Imogen returned, with gentle sadness. "You _are_ robbing some one, mama dear."

"Apparently we are a naughty couple, you and I, Tison," Mrs. Upton said, "but I am too old and you too eternally young to mend."

She had begun to crochet again; but, though she resumed all her lightness, her mildness, Jack fancied that she was a little angry.

When he was gone, Mrs. Upton said, looking up at her daughter: "Of course you must have Mary Osborne to stay with you, Imogen,"

Imogen had gone to the fire and was gazing into it. She was full of a deep contentment. By her att.i.tude toward Jack this evening, her reception of his avowal, she had completely vindicated herself. Peace of mind was impossible to Imogen unless her conscience were clear of any cloud, and now the morning's humiliating fear was more than atoned for. She was not the woman to clutch at safety when pain threatened; she had spoken to him exactly as she would have spoken yesterday, before knowing that she was poor. And, under this satisfaction, was the serene gladness of knowing him so surely hers.

Her face, as she turned it toward her mother, adjusted itself to a task of loving severity. "I cannot think of having her, mama."

"Why not? She will add almost nothing to our expenses. I never for a moment dreamed of your not having her. I don't know why you thought it my wish."

Imogen looked steadily at her: "Not your wish, mama? After what you told me this morning?"

"I only said that we must be economical and careful."

"To have one's friends to stay with one is a luxury, is not to be economical and careful. I don't forget what you said of my expensive mode of life, of my clothes--a reproof that I am very sure was well deserved; I should not have been so thoughtless. But it is not fair, mama, really it is not fair--you must see that--to reproach me, and my father--by implication, even if not openly--with our reckless charities, and then refuse to take the responsibility for my awakening."

Imogen, though she spoke with emotion, spoke without haste. Her mother sat with downcast eyes, working on, and a deep color rose to her cheeks.

"I do want things to be open and honest between us, mama," Imogen went on.

"We are so very different in temperament, in outlook, in conviction, that to be happy together we must be very true with each other. I want you always to say just what you mean, so that I may understand what you really want of me and may clearly see whether I can do it or not. I have such a horror of any ambiguity in human relations, I believe so in the most perfect truth."

Valerie was still silent for some moments after this. When she did speak it was only of the practical matter that they had begun with. "I do want you to have your friends with you, Imogen. It will not be a luxury. I will see that we can afford it."

"I shall be very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before.

You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, by my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some way--perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack is very near me, mama."

"But not near me."

"Ah, you made me feel that, too; and that you reproached me with having, as it were, forced an intimacy upon you."