pathy for a suitor before. She leaned forward and
patted his hand.

"I cannot marry you, dear Weeliam," she said,
and never had he seen her so sweet and adorable,
although he noted with a pang that her mouth was
already drawn with a firmer line. "But what mat-
ter? I shall never marry at all. For many years--
forty, fifty perhaps--I shall sit here on the veranda,
and you shall read to me."

And then she shivered violently. But she set her
mouth until it was almost straight, and picked up
the little dress. "Not that, perhaps," she said
quietly in a moment. "I sometimes think I should
like to be a nun, that, after all, it is my vocation.
Not a cloistered one, for that is but a selfish life.
But to teach, to do good, to forget myself. There
are no convents in California, but I could join the
Third Order of the Franciscans, and wear the gray
habit, and be set aside by the world as one that only
lived to make it a little better. To forget oneself!
That, after all, may be the secret of happiness. I
envy none of my friends that are married. They
have the dear children, it is true. But the children
grow up and go away, and then one is fat and eats
many dulces and the siesta grows longer and longer
and the face very brown. That is life in California.
I should prefer to work and pray, and"--with a
flash of insight that made her drop her work again