I'm the unhappiest
woman in all the world. I want to die! I don't know what to do. I want
to be square and I don't know how."

"Bonnie," says I after a while, slow, "I know all about it now. You've
been plumb crazy and you're crazy now. You've kept on remembering that
low-down sneak next door. You've turned down a high-toned gentleman like
Tom--and you done it for what? You ain't acted on the square, Bonnie
Bell Wright," says I. "It ain't needful for me to tell all I know about
him now. I could tell you plenty more."

"No," says she, and she was crying now; "it was an evil thing of me ever
to listen to him. I've done wrong," says she. "But what must I do?" says
she, "Must I lie all my life? I can't do that."

[Illustration: "'I know now what it means to be a woman and in
love.'"]

"Well, some women are able to--just a little," says I. "Maybe you'd get
over that business of that man next door if you was married and had a
few kids of your own running around. You'd be happy with Tom. We'd all
be happy. You'd forget--of course you'd forget. Women are built that
way," says I. "I reckon I know!"

"Curly----" And, though she looked just like she always had, young and
white and beautiful, and fit only to be loved by anybody, her face had
something in it that made her look old, real old, like one of them
statutes in our front yard.

She was twenty-three, and pretty as anything ever made in marble--and
white as anything in marble; but she looked a thousand years old as she
stood there then. There was something in her face that seemed to come
down from 'way back in the past. She was--well, I reckon she was what
she said--a woman!

"Curly," says she, "some women may be able to forget. It's the easiest
way--maybe most of them do it. The average woman lives that way. But I
can't, Curly; I can't--it isn't in my blood. Women like me have got to
follow their own hearts, Curly--no matter what it means.

"I tried with all my heart to lie to Tom tonight. I even told him I
wouldn't answer now--even told him to come back again after while; but I
knew all the time I couldn't lie forever. I knew I could love some
man--a man--but it wasn't for him. I'm like my father and like my
mother, Curly. Do you want to crush the life out of me? Do you want to
make me do something we'd all regret as long as ever we lived?"

She stopped talking then; but, sort of swinging around, she went on:

"It's been but a little while, Curly," says she. "It