when he lives more within that structure
of infinite variety, himself, less and less dependent upon the
aggregations Life has devised for amusing and tormenting him, still we
must reach that condition by very slow degrees; if we take it with a
leap the result will be an ugly and disastrous selfishness. If you can
prove to the world that you have found happiness in the cultivation of
the higher faculties, you will serve a purpose in life, for you will
encourage a certain class of women born with such serious lacks, in the
health or the affections, or even in the power to endure the mere
monotonies of married life, that they are better off alone; but who
often feel themselves a failure and drop into morbidity and decay. That
means contact for your highness, however. If you sit down by your marsh
for the rest of your life and dream, you miss the whole point. And when
time forced you to realize the uncompromising selfishness of such a
life--where would your happiness be then?"

"Now you are talking by the book. Why are we so sure that it is a part
of our duty to make others happy? That may be but one more superstition
to rout. If we manage to be happy ourselves, and through the exercise of
the higher faculties alone, we may be serving an end decreed from the
beginning; by some subtle process, as incomprehensible as even the
commonplaces of life, add to the sum of happiness, and so serve life far
better than by scattering ourselves all over the surface. But I told you
something of this before and have not forgotten the result."

"Neither have I, but one can get accustomed to any idea. What I want to
know is--do you leave youth entirely out of your calculations?"

"Oh--youth! Well--it is possible I might not if I had not lived through
its tragedy already--for which I am thankful."

"You have had romance and tragedy, and you are a very experienced young
woman, but you have not had happiness," said Gwynne, shrewdly. "That,
too, is a birthright, and sooner or later you will demand it. Social
conquests have palled in seven days. In time chickens also will cease to
satisfy, and books, and dreams, and sunsets, and liberty. The peculiar
conditions and events of your first quarter-century demanded an interval
before beginning again; and filled with all you have deliberately
chosen--all, that is, but chickens, which are a work not of God but of
supererogation. But intervals come to an end like other things. When
this finishes you w