"At all events, I must decide!" I exclaimed, starting again to my feet. "Somehow, the office atmosphere isn't exactly conducive to deep thought--and I've had so little time since morning to get away by myself and thresh matters out."

Mother looked at me incredulously.

"Will you please tell me just what you mean, Grace?" she asked.

"I mean that I must get away--I've imagined that I ought to take some serious thought, weigh the matter well, so to speak--before I write to the Coburn-Colt Publishing Company. In other words, I have to decide."

"Decide?" mother repeated, her face filled with piteous amazement.

"_Decide?_"

"Decide?" Guilford said, taking up the strain complainingly.

"If you'll excuse me!" I answered, starting toward the door, then turning with an effort at nonchalance, for their sakes, to wave them a little adieu. "Suppose you keep on playing 'Knowest thou the land where the citron-flower blooms,' Guilford--for I am filled with _wanderl.u.s.t_ right now, and this music will help out Uncle Lancelot's presentation of the matter considerably!"

"What?"

"I'm going to listen to the voices," I explained. "All day long grandfather and Uncle Lancelot have been busy making the fur fly in my conscience!"

Mother darted across the room and caught my hand.

"You don't mean to say that you have scruples--_scruples_--Grace Christie?"

She couldn't have hated smallpox worse--in me.

"Honest Injun, I don't know!" I admitted. "Of course, it does seem absurd to ponder over what a family row might be raised in the Seventh Circle of Nirvana by the publication of these old love-letters, but--"

"James Mackenzie Christie died in 1849," she declared vehemently.

"Absurd! It is _insane_!"

"That's what the Uncle Lancelot part of my intelligence keeps telling me," I laughed. "But--good heavens! you just ought to hear the grandfather argument."

"What does he--what does that silly _Salem_ conscience of yours say against the publication of the letters?" she asked grudgingly.

I sat down again.

"Shall I tell you?" I began good-naturedly, for I saw that mother was at the melting point--melting into tears, however, not a.s.sent.

"Whenever I want to do anything I'm not exactly _sure_ of, these two provoking old gentlemen come into the room--the council-chamber of my heart--and begin their post-mortem warfare. Grandfather is white-bearded and serene, while Uncle Lancelot looks exactly as an Italian tenor _ought_ to look--and never does."

"And you look exactly like him," mother snapped viciously. "Nothing about you resembles your grandfather except your brow and eyes."

"I know that," I answered resignedly. "Hasn't some one said that the upper part of my face is as lofty as a Byronic thought--and the lower as devilish as a Byronic _deed_?"

Neither of them smiled, but Guilford stirred a little.

"Go on with your argument, Grace," he urged patiently. He was always patient.

"I'm going!" I answered. "All day grandfather has been telling me what I already know--that the Coburn-Colt Company doesn't want those letters of James Christie's because they are literary, or beautiful, or historical, but simply and solely because they are _bad_! They'll make a good-seller because they're the thing the public demands right now. Lady Frances Webb was a _married_ woman!"

"Nonsense," mother interrupted, with a blush. "The public doesn't demand bad things! There is merely a craze for intimate, biographical matter--told in the first person."

"I know," I admitted humbly. "This is what distinguishes a human from an inhuman doc.u.ment."

"The craze demands a simple straightforward narrative--" Guilford began, then hesitated.

"In literature this is the period of the great '_I Am_,'" I broke in.

"People want the secrets of a writer's soul, rather than the tricks of his vocabulary, I know."

"Well, good lord--you wouldn't be giving the twentieth century any more of these people's souls than they themselves gave to the early nineteenth," he argued scornfully. "She put his portrait into every book she ever wrote--and he annexed her face in the figure of every saint--and sinner--he painted!"

"Well, that was because they couldn't _see_ any other faces," I defended.

"Bosh!"

"But Lady Frances Webb was a good woman," mother insisted weakly.

"She had pre-Victorian ideas! She sent her lover across seas, because she felt that she must! Why, the publication of these letters would do _good_, not harm."

"They would shame the present-day idea of 'affinity' right," said Guilford.

I nodded my head, for this was the same theory that Uncle Lancelot had been whispering in my ears since the postman blew his whistle that morning. And yet--

"Maybe you two--don't exactly understand the import of those letters as I do," I suggested, sorry and ashamed before the gaze of their practical eyes. "But to me they mean so much! I have always _loved_ James Christie and--his Unattainable. I can feel for them, and--"

"And you mean to say that you are going to give way to an absurd fancy now--a ridiculous, far-fetched, namby-pamby, quixotic fancy?" mother asked, in a tone of horror.

"I--I'm--afraid so!" I stammered.

"And miss this chance--for all the things you want most? The very things you're toiling day and night to get?"

"And put off the prospect of our marriage?" Guilford demanded. "I had hoped that this business transaction would satisfy the unaccountable desire you seem to have for independence--that after you had circled about a little in the realm of emanc.i.p.ated women and their strained notions of what const.i.tutes freedom, you'd see the absurdity of it all and--come to me."

"I am awfully sorry, Guilford," I answered, dropping my eyes, for I knew that "freedom," "independence" and "emanc.i.p.ation" had nothing on earth to do with my delayed marriage--and I knew that I was doing wrong not to say so. "I am _awfully_ sorry to disappoint you."

"Then you have decided finally?" mother asked in a suspicious voice.

"I believe I have," I answered. "Oh, please don't look at me that way--and please don't cry! I can't help it!"

"It is preposterous," Guilford said shortly.

"But you don't--understand!" I cried, turning to him pleadingly. "You don't know what it is to feel as I feel about those lovers--those people who had no happiness in this world--and are haunted and tormented by curiosity in their very graves!--don't you suppose I want to do the thing you and mother want me to do? Of course, I do! I want this--this new piano--and another brown tweed skirt that doesn't bag at the knees--and I want--so many things!"

"Then why in the name of----" he began.

"Because I _won't_!" I told him flatly. "Call it conscience--fancy, or what you will!--I have those two people in my power--their secrets are right here in my hands! And I'm not going to _give them away_!"

"Grace, you a-maze me!" mother sobbed.

But Guilford rose tranquilly and reached for his hat.