llis had no taste in this direction. Writing a book
and riding a bicycle were alike outside her calculations of a scheme of
life. Hospital nursing was nothing that she would shrink from; at the
same time, it did not attract her; she felt that she could dress quite
as becomingly as a hospital nurse in another way.

She wondered, if it should come to the knowledge of the heads of the
government of Philistia that she had a yearning to become the wife of
a clergyman, would they regard her as worthy to be conducted across the
frontier, and doomed to perpetual expatriation. When she began to think
out this point, she could not but feel that if she were deserving of
punishment,--she looked on expulsion from Philistia as the severest
punishment that could be dealt out to her, for she was extremely
patriotic,--there were a good many other young women, and women who were
no longer young, who were equally culpable. She had watched the faces of
quite a number of the women who crowded St. Chad's at every service, and
she had long ago come to the conclusion that the desire to become the
wife of a clergyman was an aspiration which was universally distributed
among the unmarried women of the congregation.

She knew so much, but she was not clever enough to know that it was her
observance of this fact that confirmed her in her belief that it would
be a blessed privilege for such a woman as she to become the wife of
such a clergyman as George Holland. She was not wise enough to be able
to perceive that a woman marries a man not so much because she things
highly of marriage--although she does think highly of it; not so much
because she thinks highly of the man--though she may think highly of
him, but simply because she sees that other women want to marry him.

In three months she considered herself blessed among women. She was the
one chosen out of all the flock. She did not look around her in church
in pride of conquest; but she looked demurely down to her sacred books,
feeling that all the other women were gazing at her in envy; and she
felt that there was no pride in the thought that the humility of her
attitude--downcast eyes, with long lashes shading half her cheeks,
meekly folded hands--was the right one to adopt under the circumstances.

And then she saw several of the young women who had been wearing sober
shades of dresses for some years,--though in their hearts (and she knew
it) they were passionately attached to colors,--appe