d faint away in church? Remember that you are an Old
Maid." How disagreeable old maids can be! And I've got to live with this
one always. I'll put the key in my purse. Nice, sensible, prosaic place,
a purse.

How late it grows! I have only a little time left. I believe that clock
is fast. Dear, dear! Do I want to just sit still and watch myself turn?
I meant to have old age overtake me in my sleep. I think I'll stop that
clock and let my youth fade from me unawares.

II

I COME INTO MY KINGDOM

"There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief
relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost
her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half
whispered itself to her and then forever passed her by."

I have become an Old Maid, and really it is a relief. I feel as if I had
left myself behind me, and that now I have a right to the interests of
other people when they are freely offered. My friends always have confided
in me. I suppose it is because I am receptive. Men tell me their old love
affairs. Girls tell me the whole story of their engagements--how they came
to take this man, and why they did not take that one. And even the most
ordinary are vitally interesting. Before I know it, I am rent with the
same despair which agitates the lover confiding in me; or I am wreathed
in the smiles of the engaged girl who is getting her absorbing secret
comfortably off her mind. It seems to comfort them to air their emotion,
and sometimes I am convinced that they leave the most of it with me.

Now I can feel at liberty to enjoy and sympathize as I will. Well, the
love affairs of other people are the rightful inheritance of old maids.
In sharing them I am only coming into my kingdom.

Alice Asbury has made shipwreck of hers. The girl is actively miserable
and her husband is indifferently uncomfortable, which is the habit this
married couple have of experiencing the same emotion.

Alice is a mass of contradictions to those who do not understand her--now
in the clouds, now in the depths. Bad weather depresses her; so does a sad
story, the death of a kitten, solemn music. She is correspondingly
volatile in the opposite direction and often laughs at real calamities
with wonderful courage. She has a fund of romance in her nature which has
led her to the pass she now is in. She is clever, too, at introspect