n a girl
no longer dreams of her future she has found herself. Maria had
always been accustomed to go to sleep lulled by her dreams of
innocent romance. Now she no longer had them, it was as if a child
missed a lullaby. She was a long time in getting to sleep at all, and
she did not sleep well. She no longer stared over the page of a
lesson-book into her own future, as into a crystal well wherein she
saw herself glorified by new and strange happiness. She studied, and
took higher places in her classes, but she did not look as young or
as well. She grew taller and thinner, and she looked older. People
said Maria Edgham was losing her beauty, that she would not be as
pretty a woman as she had promised to make, after all. Maria no
longer dwelt so long and pleasurably upon her reflection in the
glass. She simply arranged her hair and neck-gear tidily and went her
way. She did not care so much for her pretty clothes. A girl without
her dreams is a girl without her glory of youth. She did not quite
realize what was the matter, but she knew that she was no longer so
fair to see, and that the combination of herself and a new gown was
not what it had been. She felt as if she had reached the last page of
her book of life, and the _ennui_ of middle age came over her. She
had not reached the last page; she was, of course, mistaken; but she
had reached a paragraph so tremendous that it seemed to her the
climax, as if there could be nothing beyond it. She was married--that
is, she had been pronounced a wife! There was, there could be,
nothing further. She was both afraid of, and disliked, the boy who
had married her. There was nothing ahead that she could see but a
commonplace existence without romance and without love. She as yet
did not dwell upon the possible complications which might arise from
her marriage. It simply seemed to her that she should always live a
spinster, although the marriage ceremony had been pronounced over
her. She began to realize that in order to live in this way she must
take definite steps. She knew that her father was not rich. The
necessity for work and earning her own living in the future began to
present itself. She made up her mind to fit herself for a teacher.

"Papa, I am going to teach," she told her father one afternoon.

Ida had gone out. It was two years after her marriage, and Maria
looked quite a woman. She and her father were alone. Evelyn had gone
to bed. Maria had tucked her in and kissed