Dimly she sensed a vague influence at work to strengthen the ties that bound her to Barrow, and to all that Barrow signified.
She faced the question with characteristic frankness.

Tim had his own place in her heart--secure and unassailable.

But it was not the place in that sacred inner temple which is reserved for the one man, and she recognized this with a limpid clearness of perception rather uncommon in a girl of twenty.

She also recognized that it was within the bounds of possibility that the one man might never come to claim that place, and that, if she gave Tim the answer he so ardently desired, they would quite probably rub along together as well as most married folk--better, perhaps, than a good many.

But she was very sure that she never intended to desecrate that inner temple by any lesser substitute for love.
Thus she reasoned, with the untried confidence of youth, which is so pathetically certain of itself and of its ultimate power to hold to its ideals, ignorant of the overpowering influences which may develop to push a man or woman this way or that, or of the pain that may turn clear, definite thought into a welter of blind anguish, when the soul in its agony snatches at any anodyne, true or false, which may seem to promise relief.
A little irritably she folded up Elisabeth's letter.