The spring ripened into summer in uneventful fashion, so far as I was
concerned, the smooth current of my life flowing on untroubled, hard
reading and merry play filling the happy days. I learned later that two
or three offers of marriage reached my mother for me; but she answered to
each: "She is too young. I will not have her troubled." Of love-dreams I
had absolutely none, partly, I expect, from the absence of fiery novels
from my reading, partly because my whole dream-tendencies were absorbed
by religion, and all my fancies ran towards a "religious life". I longed
to spend my time in worshipping Jesus, and was, as far as my inner life
was concerned, absorbed in that passionate love of "the Savior" which,
among emotional Catholics, really is the human passion of love
transferred to an ideal--for women to Jesus, for men to the Virgin Mary.
In order to show that I am not here exaggerating, I subjoin a few of the
prayers in which I found daily delight, and I do this in order to show
how an emotional girl may be attracted by these so-called devotional
exercises.

"O crucified Love, raise in me fresh ardors of love and consolation, that
it may henceforth be the greatest torment I can endure ever to offend
Thee; that it may be my greatest delight to please Thee."

"Let the remembrance of Thy death, O Lord Jesu, make me to desire and
pant after Thee, that I may delight in Thy gracious presence."

"O most sweet Jesu Christ, I, unworthy sinner, yet redeemed by Thy
precious blood.... Thine I am and will be, in life and in death."

"O Jesu, beloved, fairer than the sons of men, draw me after Thee with
the cords of Thy love."