ately throw away everything that can
make life really worth living to us women, is a most contemptible
fool. But you love her, and, therefore, you should be sorry for her."

"But why?"

"Because she is a woman who at one-and-twenty has buried all the
higher part of life, who has, of her own act, for ever deprived
herself of joys that nothing else can bring her. Love, true love, is
almost the only expression, of which we women are capable, of all the
nobler instincts and vague yearnings after what is higher and better
than the things we see and feel around us. When we love most, and love
happily, then we are at our topmost bent, and soar further above the
earth than anything else can carry us. Consequently, when a woman is
faithless to her love, which is the purest and most honourable part of
her, the very best thing to which she can attain, she clips her wings,
and can fly no more, but must be tossed, like a crippled gull, hither
and thither upon the stormy surface of her little sea. Of course, I
speak of women of the higher stamp. Many, perhaps most, will feel
nothing of all this. In a little while they will grow content with
their dull round and the alien nature which they have mated with, and
in their children, and their petty cares and dissipations, will forget
that they possess a higher part, if indeed they do possess it. Like
everything else in the world, they find their level. But with women
like your Angela it is another thing. For them time only serves to
increasingly unveil the Medusa-headed truth, till at last they see it
as it is, and their hearts turn to stone. Backed with a sick longing
to see a face that is gone from them, they become lost spirits,
wandering everlastingly in the emptiness they have chosen, and finding
no rest. Even her children will not console her."

Arthur uttered a smothered exclamation.

"Don't start, Arthur; you _must_ accustom yourself to the fact that
that woman has passed away from you, and is as completely the personal
property of another man, as that chair is mine. But, there, the
subject is a painful one to you; shall we change it?"

"It is one that you seem to have studied pretty deeply."

"Yes, because I have realized its importance to a woman. For some
years I have longed to be able to fall in love, and when at last I did
so, Arthur," and here her voice grew very soft, "it was with a man who
could care nothing for me. Such has been my unlucky chance. That a
woman, her