monologue, that Hester and
Rachel arranged to meet by stealth.

They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their backs
against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes.

"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said Rachel,
with a sigh.

Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love
disaster.

"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should
offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of
trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end."

Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words
a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.

"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester,
dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high
praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does
not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he
has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him
in a little patent safe of his own."

"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture,"
said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. Dick."

There was a short silence.

"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how
commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate
novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong,
promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of
stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I
have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal
experience. I keep before my mind that other men are _not_ like _him_. I
know they aren't, but yet--somehow I think they are. I am frightened."

Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.

"Do you still consider, after these four years, that _he_ did you an
injury?"

Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of
midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the
distant hills.

"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away.
I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am
naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now,
looking back, such a dreadful waste."

"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a
waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless
passio