"My bridesmaid's kit is Grizel's present, and seems stretching to
immense proportions. A dress for the ceremony, and a dress for the
evening, and a hat and a cloak, and fal-lals of every description. Do
you think the regiment will give some function to let me show them off?
Now that my own future no longer casts its shadow over the whole
landscape, I am immensely enjoying the engaged couple. They are so
deliriously gay and young, and happy and hopeful; and the nice part
about it is--it is going to last! I feel _sure_ it will, for through
his long experience of sorrow and loss Martin has learned how to give
the one all-important thing that is necessary to a woman's happiness.
Have you the slightest idea what it is? You will smile at the sentiment
of women, and say `Love, of course,' but it isn't love, at least it is
not necessarily included in that term. Many a man honestly loves his
wife, and yet succeeds in making her miserable. No! it is just a
simple, homely quality without which the grandest of passions is
incomplete! _Tenderness_! Tenderness means kindness and understanding,
and sympathy, and imagination, and patience--above all, _patience_!
When a man is in love he thinks a woman perfect, but she isn't, she is
an irrational, inconsequent creature, whose mate will have need of
patience every day of his life, and sometimes many times a day. Of
course there _do_ exist female paragons, calm, correct creatures, with
smooth hair and chiselled features, who are always serene and
self-contained, but then they are also independent of tenderness. This
grows complicated! I'd better drop pretence and confess at once that
when I talk generalities I really mean You and Me, the two people who
are at the back of _all_ generalities!

"I am erratic and variable... On Tuesday, for no tangible cause, I feel
bubbling over with happiness; on Wednesday, for an equally logical
reason, I crave for death. On occasions I can be exasperatingly
contrary. I know it all the time, and am furious with myself, but that
only makes me worse! On after reflection I either pray and fast, or in
brazen fashion excuse myself on the score of electric influences! After
all, why shouldn't I? We are the most sensitive of machines, and if
climatic disturbances affect the wires at a distance of thousands of
miles, why should _We_ pass unscathed? I sometimes think we are too
hard on our own moods and tempers, but they are trying enough in an