me, Nannie. I know that now. I did not know it then. But Mr. Knox
should have known it. Yet he held out the hope; and at last he
robbed me of my future, of the little home, my fine, strong
husband. He robbed me of my woman's heritage of a child in my arms.

"And in return he gave me--nothing. I have found in the years that
I have been with him that he likes to be admired and looked up to
by pretty women. He likes to mold us into something exquisite and
ornamental, he likes to feel that he has molded us. He likes to see
our blushes. All these years that I have been with him, he has
liked to feel that I looked upon him as the ideal toward which all
my girlish dreams tended.

"He is not in love with me, and I am not in love with him. But he
has always known that if he had been free and had wooed me, I
should have felt that King Cophetua had come to the beggar maid.
Yet, too late, I can see that if he had been free he would never
have wooed me. His ambition would have carried him up and beyond
anything I can ever hope to be, and he would have sought some woman
of his own circle who would have contributed to his material
success.

"And now he is trying to spoil your life, Nannie--to make you
discontented with your future with Dick. You look at him and see in
your life some day a Prince Charming. But I tell you this, Nannie,
that Prince Charming will never come. And after a time all you will
have to show for the years that you have spent in the office will
be just a pretty room, a few bits of wood and leather and bronze in
exchange for warm, human happiness, clinging hands, a husband like
Dick, who adores you, who comes home at night, eager--for you!

"You can have all this--and I have lost it. And there isn't much
ahead of me. I shan't always be ornamental, and then Mr. Knox will
let me drop out of his life, as he has let others drop out. And
there'll be loneliness and old age and--nothing else.

"Oh, Nannie, I want you to marry Dick. I want you to know that all
the rest is dust and ashes. I feel tired and old; and when I think
of your youth, and beauty, I want Dick to have it, not Mr. Knox,
who will flatter and--forget.

"Tear this letter up, Nannie. It hasn't been easy to write. I don't
want anybody but you to read it."

But Nanni