, and
everything is so mutable that sometimes my cheerfulness has a haze to it.

I am in a mood of retrospection to-night. I am living over the past and
knitting up the ravelled ends.

Dear Rachel! I am thankful that she and Percival continue so happy. It is
wonderful how every one recognizes and speaks of the completeness of
these two. They do not parade their affection. They seem rather to try to
hide it even from me, as if it were almost too sacred for even my kindly
eyes. It is in the atmosphere, and, though they go their separate ways,
they are more thoroughly together than any other married people I know.

Both Percival and Rachel are becoming very generally recognized now.
People are discovering how wonderfully clever their work is, and they
share themselves with the public, although it is a sacrifice every time
they do so. Rachel's rather turbulent cleverness has softened down. She
says it is because it is "billowed in another greater and gentler sort."
She looks at me rather wistfully sometimes. I know what she thinks, but
she does not bore me with questions. I wonder if she thinks I regret
anything. Unless I consider that the Percivals have redeemed the record I
am keeping, there is nothing especially tempting in the marriages I am
watching. I cannot think that they are any happier than I am.

Sallie Cox seems contented most of the time. She has a magnificent
establishment, handsomer than all the rest of the girls' put together. Her
husband "doesn't bother" her, she says, and the Osbornes are very popular.

"I'm glad I'm shallow," she said to me once. "Shallow hearts do not ache
long. If I had a deep nature I should go mad or turn into a saint. As it
is, I wear the scars."

Once, when I went with her to Rachel's, she sat and looked around the
simple, inexpensive house, with the walls all lined with books and no room
too good to live in every day, and she said,

"This is the prettiest home I ever was in in my life, and there is not a
lace curtain in the house!"

We laughed--everybody laughs at Sallie--and Rachel said gently,

"We don't need them."

Sallie looked up quickly and took in the full significance of the words,
as she answered in the same tone,

"No, you do not, but I do." And each woman had told her heart history.
Now, Rachel must know almost as much about Sallie as I do; but she never
will know all.

Sallie said she went home and hated every room in her house separately and
specifically