Again she leaned back in her chair and tapped its arms with her long,
slender fingers. "I wonder how long I have to live. One--five--ten
years? What puppets we humans are--what puppets! Born without
permission, dying when it is neither pleasant nor convenient, we are
made to march or crawl through life on the edge of a precipice from
which at any moment we may be knocked over. And we're told we should
believe the experience is a privilege!" Both hands were lifted. "A
privilege! Mary thinks it is, thinks parts of it very pleasant, but Mary
never was a field in which she didn't find a four-leaf clover, and I
never saw one in which I did. 'Look for it,' she tells me." She shook
her head. "It isn't that. The pitiful part of life is when one cares so
little for what life gives!"

The tips of her fingers were brought together, then opened and shut
mechanically. "And once I cared so much! Who doesn't care when they
are young and wonderful things are ahead? Who doesn't care? And
now to be caring again after the long, long, useless years! To be
caring again!"

She closed her eyes and smiled a queer, twisted little smile. "It's got
me!" she said. "Old or not, it's got me! and it's a poor life that it
doesn't get! But who would have thought at your age, Gibbie Gault, you
would let another life do with yours what it will? And that's what you
are doing; you are letting Mary Cary do with you what she will! Well,
suppose I am?" The keen gray eyes opened with a snap, and without
warning stinging tears sprang in them. "Suppose I am? I've been a
selfish old fool and shut out the only thing worth the having in life,
and do you think now it's given me I am going to turn my back on it?
In all this big world sheis the only person who really loves me--the
only one I really love. And do you think?"--she nodded fiercely as if