I am not sure," she added, "that woman's influence, so called, isn't rather an overrated thing.

Women like to feel that they have it, and men, in matters which they hold lightly, flatter them by yielding, but I am doubtful if a man ever arrives at or abandons a settled course or conviction through the influence of a woman, however exerted." "I think you are wrong," said John, "and I feel sure of so much as this: that a man might often be or do for a woman's sake that which he would not for its sake or his own." "That is quite another thing," she said.

"There is in it no question of influence; it is one of impulse and motive." "I have told you to-night," said John, "that what you said to me had influenced me greatly." "Pardon me," she replied, "you employed a figure which exactly defined your condition.

You said I supplied the drop which caused the solution to crystallize--that is, to elaborate your illustration, that it was already at the point of saturation with your own convictions and intentions." "I said also," he urged, "that you had set the time for me.

Is the idea unpleasant to you ?" he asked after a moment, while he watched her face.
She did not at once reply, but presently she turned to him with slightly heightened color and said, ignoring his question: "Would you rather think that you had done what you thought right because you so thought, or because some one else wished to have you?
Or, I should say, would you rather think that the right suggestion was another's than your own ?" He laughed a little, and said evasively: "You ought to be a lawyer, Miss Blake.