"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know. At last I met a
man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York,
achieving a reputation as a lawyer. Shall I tell you that I fell in love
with him? He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was
beginning to feel the staleness of it. Not that I surrendered at once,
but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually
disappeared--or rather I ignored them. He had charm, a magnificent
self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed,
in regard to women, most appealed to me. I was weak on that side, and I
have often wondered whether he knew it. I believed him incapable of a
great refusal.

"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom
--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two
before the wedding . . . . The manner in which he said it suddenly
turned me cold. Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back,
to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I
tell you?--he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my
father's money . . . .

"I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to
stone. And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went
out. . . Three months later he came back and said that I had
misunderstood him, that he couldn't live without me. I sent him away....
Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends . . . .

"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired! Everything seemed to go out of