and she was in her twenty-second year.

She was not a native of New York, and the few young men she had met
there she did not care for. She had regretfully decided she was too
finicky, too fastidious, but could not seem to help herself. She
could not understand their absorption in boxing and baseball and
she did not like the way they danced.

She had considered the matter and decided that she would have to
reconsider her former opinion of women who did not marry. Heretofore
she had thought there must be something the matter with them.
Now she believed that she would come to their own estate, and
probably for the same reason. She could not fall in love and she
wanted to.

She read all the popular novels and thrilled at the love-scenes
contained in them, but when any of the young men she knew became
in the slightest degree sentimental she found herself bored, and
disgusted with herself for being bored. Still, she could not help it,
and was struggling to reconcile herself to a life without romance.

She was far too pretty for that, of course, and Arthur Chamberlain
often longed to tell her how pretty she really was, but her
abstracted air held him at arms' length.

He lay back at ease in his swivel-chair and considered, looking at
her with unfeigned pleasure. She did not notice it, for she was so
much absorbed in her own thoughts that she rarely noticed anything
he said or did when they were not in the line of her duties.