driving? 'Yes, pretty well; but there was no place to drive to except
into Gort, and as people had been unjust enough to say that they were
always to be seen in Gort, they had given up driving--unless, of course,
they went to call on friends.' Then tea was brought in; and, apropos of
a casual reference to conventual buttered toast, the five girls talked,
until nearly six o'clock, of their girlhood--of things that would never
have any further influence in their lives, of happiness they would never
experience again. At last Alice and Cecilia pleaded that they must be
going home.

As they walked across the fields the girls only spoke occasionally.
Alice strove to see clear, but her thoughts were clouded, scattered,
diffused. Force herself as she would, still no conclusion seemed
possible; all was vague and contradictory. She had talked to these
Brennans, seen how they lived, could guess what their past was, what
their future must be. In that neat little house their uneventful life
dribbled away in maiden idleness; neither hope nor despair broke the
triviality of their days--and yet, was it their fault? No; for what
could they do if no one would marry them?--a woman could do nothing
without a husband.

There is a reason for the existence of a pack-horse, but none for that
of an unmarried woman. She can achieve nothing--she has no duty but, by
blotting herself out, to shield herself from the attacks of
ever-slandering friends. Alice had looked forward to a husband and a
home as the certain accomplishment of years; now she saw that a woman,
independently of her own will, may remain single.

'I wonder,' she said, forgetting for the moment she was speaking to
Cecilia, 'I wonder none of those Brennans married; you can't call them