"Our set," he laughed, "but that is not the whole world, alas!"

"I know that men--well bred, cultivated, refined, even honorable
men,--seem to be able to repeat every emotion of life. A woman scales
the heights but once. Hence it must depend, in the case of women
capable of deep love--on the men whether the relation into which
marriage betrays them be decent or indecent. What I should like to be
able to discover is--what provision does either man or civilization
propose to make for the woman whom Fate, in wanton irony, reduces,
even in marriage, to the self-considered level of the girl in the
street?"

There was amazement--even a foreboding--on Shattuck's face as he
paused in his walk, and, for the first time speaking anxiously
ejaculated, "I swear I don't follow you!"

She went on as if she had not been interrupted, as if she had
something to say which had to be said, as if she were reasoning it out
for herself: "Take my case. I don't claim that it is uncommon. I do
claim that I was not the woman for the situation. I was an only child.
My father's marriage had not been happy. I was brought up by a
disappointed man on philosophy and pessimism."

"Old sceptics, and modern scoffers. I remember it well."

"Before I was out of my teens, I had imbibed a mistrust for all
emotions. Perhaps you did not know that? You may have thought, because
they were not all on the outside, that I had none. My poor father had
hoped, with his teachings, to save me from future misery. He had