d
affection, and so, all--all is sepulchred in one deep grave. I have
spent my wealth of spicery; the days of my anointing are for ever
ended. To true deep-hearted women it is given to love once only, and
all such scorn to set a second, lesser, lower idol, where formerly
they bowed in worship. Even false gods hold sway long after their
images are defiled, their temples overthrown, and as the Dodonian
Groves still whisper of the old oracular days, to modern travellers,
so a woman's idolatry leaves her no shrine, no libation, no reverence
for new divinities; mutilated though she acknowledges her Hermae, no
fresh image can profane their pedestal. Memory is the high priestess
who survives the wreck of altars and of gods, and faithfully
ministers amid the gloom of the soul's catacombs. I owe much to
mamma, and something to Erle Palma, who is a nobler man than I have
deemed him, less a bronze Macchiavelli, with a heart of quartz; and
I shall never again as heretofore rashly defy their advice and
wishes. But I know myself too well to hope for happiness in the gay
frivolous insincere world, where I have fluttered out my butterfly
existence of fashionable emptiness.

'I kissed the painted bloom off Pleasure's lips
And found them pale as Pain's.'

I have bruised and singed my Psyche wings, and _le beau monde_ has no
new, strong pinions to replace those beat out in its hard tyrannous
service. You think me cynical and misanthropic, but, dear, I believe
I am only clear-eyed at last. If I had married him for whom I dared
so much, and found too late that all the golden qualities I fondly
dreamed that he possessed were only baser metal, gaudy tinsel that
tarnished in my grasp, I am afraid it would have maddened me beyond
hope of reclamation. I have made shipwreck; but a yet sadder fate
might have overtaken me, and at least my soul has outridden the
storm, thanks to your frail babyish hands, so desperately strong when
they grappled that awful night with suicidal sin. Few women have
suffered more keenly than I, and yet, in Murial's sweet patient
words,--

'God has been good to me; you must not think
That I despair. _There is a quiet time
Like evening in my soul. I have no heart_.'"

There was more peace in Olga's countenance as she clasped one of
Regina's hands in hers than her companion had yet seen, and after a
moment, she continued:

"You know, dear, that we are only wait