you, though I know so little of you. You know, last summer he came and
stayed with us a month. I saw a great deal of him. I don't know if he
liked me; I know he liked my singing, and we rode together--I liked him
more than any man I have ever seen. Oh, you know it isn't true that a
woman can only like a man when he likes her; and I thought, perhaps, he
liked me a little. Since we have been in town we have asked, but he has
never come to see us. Perhaps people have been saying something to him
about me. You know him, you are always meeting him, couldn't you say or do
anything for me?" She looked up with her lips white and drawn. "I feel
sometimes as if I were going mad! Oh, it is so terrible to be a woman!"
The woman looked down at her. "Now I hear he likes another woman. I don't
know who she is, but they say she is so clever, and writes. Oh, it is so
terrible, I can't bear it."

The woman leaned her elbow against the mantelpiece, and her face against
her hand. She looked down into the fire. Then she turned and looked at
the younger woman. "Yes," she said, "it is a very terrible thing to be a
woman." She was silent. She said with some difficulty: "Are you sure you
love him? Are you sure it is not only the feeling a young girl has for an
older man who is celebrated, and of whom every one is talking?"

"I have been nearly mad. I haven't slept for weeks!" She knit her little
hands together, till the jewelled rings almost cut into the fingers. "He
is everything to me; there is nothing else in the world. You, who are so
great, and strong, and clever, and who care only for your work, and for men
as your friends, you cannot understand what it is when one person is
everything to you, when there is nothing else in the world!"

"And what do you want me to do?"