probably thought to spare me the commonplace sorrows of love. But he
could not."

"There is one thing, my child, that the passing generation cannot do
for its heirs--live for them--luckily. Why, you might as well forbid a
rose to blossom by word of mouth, as try to thwart nature in a
beautiful healthy woman."

"It seems to me that to bring up a woman as I was brought up only
prepares her to take the distemper the quicker."

"I do not remember that of you. But I do know that no woman was ever
wooed as hotly as you were--or ever--I swear it--more ardently
desired. No woman ever led a man the chase you led me. If ever in
those days you were as anxious for my love as you have said you were
this evening, no one would have guessed it, least of all I."

"My reason had already taught me that mine was but the common fate of
all women: that life was demanding of me the usual tribute to
posterity: that the sweetness of the emotion was Nature's trick to
make it endurable. But according to Nature's eternal plan, my heart
could not listen to my head--it beat so loud when you were by, it
could not hear, perhaps. But there was something of my father's
philosophy left in me, and when I was alone it would speak, and be
heard, too. Even when I believed in you--because I wanted to--and half
hoped that all my teaching was wrong, I made a bargain with myself. I
told myself, quite calmly, that I knew perfectly well all the
possibilities of the future. That if I went forward with you, I went
forward deliberately with open eyes, knowing what, logically, I might
expect to find in the future. Ignorance--that blissful comfort of so