She couldn't deny that Franklin hadn't their charm; but charm was a very superficial thing compared to moral beauty.
Althea could not have faced the perturbing fact that charm, to her, counted for more than goodness.

She clung to her ethical valuations of life, feeling, instinctively, that only in this category lay her own significance.

To abandon the obvious weights and measures was to find herself buffeted and astray in a chaotic and menacing universe.

Goodness was her guide, and she could cling to it if the enchanting will-o'-the-wisp did not float into sight to beckon and bewilder her.
She indignantly repudiated the conception of a social order founded on charm rather than on solid worth; yet, like other frail mortals, she found herself following what allured her nature rather than what responded to the neatly tabulated theories of her mind.

It was her beliefs and her instincts that couldn't be made to tally, and in her refusal to see that they did not tally lay her danger, as now, when with an artificially simplified attitude she waited eagerly for the coming of somebody who would restore to her her own sense of significance.
Franklin Winslow Kane arrived late one afternoon, and Althea arranged that she should greet him alone.