had her romance and
buried it deep down in her deep nature and over its grave, to keep its
ghost from rising, has piled the stones of indifference and contempt, as
many a woman has done before and since. Once upon a time Anne Singleton
sat dreaming out a story. It was a story old as the hills--older than
some of them--but to her, then, it was quite new and very wonderful. It
contained all the usual stock material common to such stories: the lad
and the lass, the plighted troth, the richer suitors, the angry parents,
the love that was worth braving all the world for. One day into this
dream there fell from the land of the waking a letter, a poor, pitiful
letter: "You know I love you and only you," it ran; "my heart will always
be yours till I die. But my father threatens to stop my allowance, and,
as you know, I have nothing of my own except debts. Some would call her
handsome, but how can I think of her beside you? Oh, why was money ever
let to come into the world to curse us?" with many other puzzling
questions of a like character, and much severe condemnation of Fate and
Heaven and other parties generally, and much self-commiseration.

Anne Singleton took long to read the letter. When she had finished it,
and had read it through again, she rose, and, crushing it her hand, flung
it in the fire with a laugh, and as the flame burnt up and died away felt
that her life had died with it, not knowing that bruised hearts can heal.

So when John Ingerfield comes wooing, and speaks to her no word of love
but only of money, she feels that here at last is a genuine voice that
she can trust. Love of the lesser side of life is still left to her. It
will be pleasant to be the wealthy mistress of a fine house, to give
great receptions, to exchange the secret poverty of home for display and
luxury. These things are offered to her on the very terms she would have
suggested herself. Accompanied by love she would have refused them,
knowing she could give none in return.

But a woman finds it one thing not to desire affection and another thing
not to possess it. Day by day the atmosphere of the fine house in
Bloomsbury grows cold and colder about her heart. Guests warm it at
times for a few hours, then depart, leaving it chillier than before.

For her husband she attempts to feel indifference, but living creatures
joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs
in a leash are compelled to think of