that to me?' she asked. 'I have nothing to do with
love or marriage.' The Elder Brother laid aside his Book of Rules. 'If
you are afflicted with an hereditary malady,' he said, 'the doctor from
the town will examine you, and report to us.' She answered, 'I have no
hereditary malady.' The Elder Brother took up his book again. 'In due
course of time, my dear, the Council will decide for you whether you are
to love and marry or not.' And he read the Rules. She sat down again,
and hid her face in her hands, and never moved or spoke until he had
done. The regular questions followed. Had she anything to say, in the
way of objection? Nothing! In that case, would she sign the Rules? Yes!
When the time came for supper, she excused herself, just like a child.
'I feel very tired; may I go to bed?' The unmarried women in the same
dormitory with her anticipated some romantic confession when she grew
used to her new friends. They proved to be wrong. 'My life has been one
long disappointment,' was all she said. 'You will do me a kindness if
you will take me as I am, and not ask me to talk about myself.' There
was nothing sulky or ungracious in the expression of her wish to keep
her own secret. A kinder and sweeter woman--never thinking of herself,
always considerate of others--never lived. An accidental discovery made
me her chief friend, among the men: it turned out that her childhood had
been passed, where my childhood had been passed, at Shedfield Heath,
in Buckinghamshire. She was never weary of consulting my boyish
recollections, and comparing them with her own. 'I love the place,' she
used to say; 'the only happy time of my life was the time passed there.'
On my sacred word of honour, this was the sort of talk that passed
between us, for week after week. What other talk could pass between a
man whose one and twentieth birthday was then near at hand, and a
woman who was close on forty? What could I do, when the poor, broken,
disappointed creature met me on the hill or by the river, and said, 'You
are going out for a walk; may I come with you?' I never attempted to
intrude myself into her confidence; I never even asked her why she had
joined the Community. You see what is coming, don't you? _I_ never saw
it. I didn't know what it meant, when some of the younger women, meeting
us together, looked at me (not at her), and smiled maliciously. My
stupid eyes were opened at last by the woman who slept in the next bed
to her in the dormito