up its traditions."_ I am, in other words, an investment from which
they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her
selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the
family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium.
Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how
sorry I was.

Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you
understand me, and I--

"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."

I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires,
but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a
disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only
more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the
husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or
obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to
get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case
was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his
oppression, if there were that, and even for _the mere offence of his
existence,_ I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars.

But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the
trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I
was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something
seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love--I know
it only too well night and day--but it must be a different kind of man.
He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so
unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of