"Perhaps you were merely young."
"It wasn't that. I was vain—feather-headed. I have realized it since knowing Marcia."
"We all want to be different after we have seen Marcia," Stanley Heath said gently.
"We don't just want to be—we set about it," was the girl's grave reply.
"Sit down, Sylvia, and let us talk of Marcia," ventured Heath after a pause. "I am deeply sorry if I have wounded her—indeed I am."
The girl searched his face.
"I cannot understand you, Mr. Heath," she said. "What has Marcia done that you should have left her as you did? Hasn't she believed in you through thick and thin? Stood up for you against everybody—going it blind at that? Few women would have had such faith in a stranger."
"I realize that. You do not need to tell me," he answered. "It is precisely because she has gone so far I believed her capable of going farther yet—the whole way."
"What do you mean by the whole way?"