f safety. She had her money to herself, and no heartaches. She
was respected, admired, and feared. By a little circle of adorers,
mostly composed of spinsters younger, poorer, and less advantageously
placed than herself, she was even loved. She was far from lonely; she
was far from having missed the best things in life. She was traveled,
well-read, philanthropic, and broad-minded. She was likewise tall,
stately, and dominant, with an early Victorian face to which a
mid-Victorian wig, kept in place by a band of plaits around the brow,
was not unbecoming. Nevertheless, Aunt Emily was entirely modern, modern
with that up-to-date femininity which with regard to men takes its key
from the bee's impulse toward the drone, stinging him to death once he
has fulfilled his functions.

It was a help to Edith that Aunt Emily could enter into the sufferings
entailed by an outraged love without being hampered by the weaknesses
inherent in the love itself. She could afford to be detached and
impartial bringing to bear on the situation the interest every
intelligent person takes in drama. For her participation Edith felt she
couldn't be too grateful to a relative on whom she had no urgent claim
beyond the fact that she was now her only one. Aunt Emily's clear vision
might, indeed, be said to have found the way through a tangle of
poignant conditions in which her own poor heart had been able to do
nothing but fumble helplessly.

It was a way of sorrows, and there had been no choice but to take it.
Chip had to be made to _feel_. Her whole being had become concentrated
on that result. From it she had expected not only realization for him,
but assuagement of longing for herself; and the latter hadn't come. She
could hardly see that anything had come at all. If it were not for Aunt
Emily she wouldn't have perceived that she had won a victory. Chip might
realize now; she didn't know; she probably would never know; it was
perhaps the impossibility of knowing that left her still unsatisfied. So
long as the thing had not yet been done she had enjoyed at least the
relief of action. She was challenging Chip, she was defying him; he was
making her some sort of response, even when it was made in silence. She
was _the_ one and he was _the_ other, and there was an interplay of
forces between them. Now all that was broken off; all that had come to
an end. She was still _the_ one; but there was no other. Where the other
had been there was a blank, an e