ings, when men and
women have killed the best in our natures. Teeth ache fiercely; then
the nerve dies, and we have surcease from pain, and find comfort in
knowing that the darkening wreck can throb no more. There was a time
when the pangs of Prometheus seemed only pastime to mine, but all
things end; and now I get on as comfortably without a heart, as the
victims of vivisection--the frogs, and guinea pigs, and rabbits--do
without their brains."

"I do indeed grieve over the fatal step you contemplate; I grieve over
your unwomanliness in marrying a man whom you do not even pretend to
love; and some terrible penalty will avenge the outrage against
feminine nature. Some day your heart will stir in its cold torpor, and
then all Dante's visions of horror, will become your realities,
scuurging you down to despair."

"Because 'Farleigh Court' may lie dangerously close to 'Denzil Place'?
Be easy, Leo; the cold remains of my ossified affection will lie in as
decorous repose as the harmless ash heaps of some long buried damosel
of the era of Lars Porsenna, dug out of Vulci or Chiusi. To make a safe
and brilliant marriage is the acme of social success. What else does
the world to which I belong, offer me now?"

"There remains always, Alma, the alternative of listening to the
instinctive monitors God set to watch in every woman's nature; and we
have the precious and inalienable privilege of being true to ourselves.
Better mourn your 'bisc' than stoop to a lower substitute. Be loyal to
yourself, be true to your own heart."

"I know myself rather too intimately to offer a tribute of admiration
on the altar of ego; and I prefer to make the experiment of trying to
be true and loyal to some one else, with whose imperfections I am not
so well acquainted. When you meet your adorable 'bisc' in society, with
a wife hanging on his arm,--when as pater familias he convoys his flock
of small children who tread on your toes at the chrysanthemum shows,
what then? The world, my world, is generously and munificently lax, and
though the limits of respectable endurance may be as hard to find as
the 'fourth dimension of space', or the authenticity of the 'Book of
Jasher', still for decency's sake we submit there are limits of
decorum; certain proprietorial domains upon which we may not openly
poach; and mcum et tuum though moribund, is not yet numbered with
belief in the 'grail'. Female emancipation is not quite complete even
in America, and nob