hey_
kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She, poor,
bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a
queen! Home and the heart of her husband--there lay her woman's kingdom,
her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none
other: she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as
her rule made it; she must be judged by her government--as she was queen
enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words.

Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,--set
in motion by those magic words,--when she lay at rest in the afternoons,
with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside
her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never
perceive from imagination, but only from experience--who cannot even
adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not
personally experienced. No advice touches them, for the words that
embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past
seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same
circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom
look back--the present, that is always climbing on into the future,
occupies them exclusively.

Lois with "The Woman's Kingdom" in her hand, felt that some source of
power and happiness which she had not realized had slipped from her
grasp, yet might still be hers. So many disconnected, half-childish
thoughts came with the words--historic names of women whom men had loved
devotedly, who had kept them as their friends and lovers even when they
themselves had grown old, women who had never lost their charm. There
were those women of the French salons, who could interest even other
generations; queens indeed! She couldn't really interest _one_ man! She
thought over the married couples of her acquaintance, in search of those
who should reveal some secret, some guiding light. One woman across the
street had no other object in life than purveying to the household
comfort of her husband, and seemed, good soul, to expect nothing from
him in return; if William liked his fish, she was repaid. A couple
farther down appeared to be held together by the fact of marriage,
nothing more; they were bored to death by each other's society. Another
couple were happily absorbed in their children, to whom they were both
sacrificially subordinate. With none of these