speak to him, he went
out. . . Three months later he came back and said that I had
misunderstood him, that he couldn't live without me. I sent him away....
Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends . . . .

"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired! Everything seemed to go out of
life. It wasn't that I loved him any longer,--all had been crushed. But
the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was. And for the first time
in my life I felt defenceless, helpless. I wanted refuge. Did you ever
hear of Jennings Howe?"

"The architect?"

Alison nodded. "Of course you must have--he is so well known. He has
been a widower for several years. He liked my work, saw its defects,
and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in
connection with his houses. He himself is above all things an artist,
and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly
advice, in the nicest way. He seemed to understand that I was going
through some sort of a crisis. He called it 'too much society.' And
then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.

"That is why I came out here--to think it over. I didn't love him, and I
told him so, but I respected him.

"He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to
refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated. To marry him
was an acknowledgment of defeat. I realized that. But I had come to the
extremity where I wanted peace--peace and protection. I wanted to put
myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone
on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn,
losing little by little what I had gained at a price.

"So I came here--to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find
something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again,
perhaps, by going back to the old associations. I could think of no
better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few
weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,--my
old atmosphere. That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order
to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the
image of my mother. More and more, as the years have passed, I have
thought of her in moments of trouble. I have recovered her as I never
had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley. Isn't it strange," she exclaimed
wonderingly, "that he should have come into both our lives, with