self-renunciation, could not have followed mere prettiness or a
commonplace experience. What that had been I never inquired, but it had
not soured her. She was not communicative nor confidential, I fancy, with
any one, but she was always friendly and sympathetic to the trouble of
others, and helpful in an undemonstrative way. If she herself had a
secret feeling that her life was a failure, it never impressed her
friends so, it was so even, and full of good offices and quiet enjoyment.
Heaven only knows, however, the pathos of this apparently undisturbed
life. For did a woman ever live who would not give all the years of
tasteless serenity, for one year, for one month, for one hour, of the
uncalculating delirium of love poured out upon a man who returned it? It
may be better for the world that there are these women to whom life has
still some mysteries, who are capable of illusions and the sweet
sentimentality that grows out of a romance unrealized.

Although the recent books were on Miss Forsythe's table, her tastes and
culture were of the past age. She admired Emerson and Tennyson. One may
keep current with the news of the world without changing his principles.
I imagine that Miss Forsythe read without injury to herself the
passionate and the pantheistic novels of the young women who have come
forward in these days of emancipation to teach their grandmothers a new
basis of morality, and to render meaningless all the consoling epitaphs
on the mossy New England gravestones. She read Emerson for his sweet
spirit, for his belief in love and friendship, her simple
Congregationalist faith remaining undisturbed by his philosophy, from
which she took only a habit of toleration.

"Miss Debree has gone to church," she said, in answer to Mr. Lyon's
glance around the room.