or forty-eight hours, and no doubt looks back upon her spinster
existence as a vague, unsatisfactory dream. She is reclining on a
deck-chair on board the great ship which is bearing her to her new home,
and her devoted husband is hovering by her side. I can just imagine how
she looks, in her white blanket coat, and the blue hood--_just_ the
right shade to go with her eyes--an artful little curl, which has taken
her quite three minutes to arrange, falling over one temple, and her
spandy little shoes stretched out at full length. I know those shoes!
By special request I rubbed the soles on the gravel paths, so that they
might not look _too_ newly married. Quite certainly Kathie will be
throwing an occasional thought to the girl she left behind her, a "poor
old Evelyn!" with a dim, pitiful little ache at the thought of my barren
lot. Quite certainly, too, for one moment when she remembers, there
will be twenty when she forgets. Quite right, of course! Quite
natural, and wife-like, and just as it should be, and only a selfish,
ungenerous wretch could wish it to be otherwise. All the same--

I wrenched myself out of the aunts' clutches yesterday morning on the
plea of going home to tidy up. Though the wedding took place from their
house, all the preparatory muddle happened here, and it will take days
and days to go through Kathie's rooms alone, and decide what to keep,
what to give away, and what to burn outright.

The drawers were littered with pretty rubbish--oddments of ribbon, old
gloves, crumpled flowers, and the like. It goes against the principles
of any right-minded female to give away tawdry fineries, and yet--and
yet--_Could_ I bear to destroy them? To see those little white gloves
shrivel up in the flames, the high heeled little slippers crumple and
split? It would seem like making a bonfire of Kathie herself.

I tidied, and arranged, and packed into fresh parcels, working at fever
heat with my hands, while all the time the voice in my brain kept
repeating, "Now, Evelyn, what are you going to do? What are you going
to do, my dear, with your blank new life?"

To leave the old home and start afresh--that is as far as I have got so
far--but I must make up my mind, and quickly too, for this house is too
full of memories to be a healthy shelter. Kathie and I have lived here
ever since we left school, first with father, then after his death with
an old governess-companion. Since her marriage a year ago