"Then I must go alone," A high determination ruled her voice.
"Alone! Mercy, Electra! you're a young woman. Don't you know you are?"
"I am glad I am young," said Electra. Her eyes were shining. "I shall have the more years to devote to it."
"You don't mean to say you propose crossing alone? Did you want to drag me out of my coffin to see you landed there respectably?"
"I am quite willing to go alone," said Electra, still with her air of beatific certainties. "I shall be the more unhampered. You must stay here all you want to, grandmother. Keep the house open. Act exactly as if it were yours."
A remembrance of the time when she had thought the place not altogether her own tempered the warmth of that permission. Some severity crept into her demeanor, and Madam Fulton, recognizing its birth, received it humbly as no more than she had earned.
"When are you going, Electra?" she asked.
"In about a month. Grandmother!" Electra, in her worship of the conduct of life, hardly knew how to express strong emotions without offense to her finer instincts. "I don't forget, grandmother," she hesitated, "that I ought to be with you."
"Why ought you?"
"Because—grandmother, haven't I a duty to you?"