SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE

BOOK I

SYLVIA AS WIFE





1. I am telling the story of Sylvia Castleman. I should prefer to
tell it without mention of myself; but it was written in the book of
fate that I should be a decisive factor in her life, and so her
story pre-supposes mine. I imagine the impatience of a reader, who
is promised a heroine out of a romantic and picturesque "society"
world, and finds himself beginning with the autobiography of a
farmer's wife on a solitary homestead in Manitoba. But then I
remember that Sylvia found me interesting. Putting myself in her
place, remembering her eager questions and her exclamations, I am
able to see myself as a heroine of fiction.

I was to Sylvia a new and miraculous thing, a self-made woman. I
must have been the first "common" person she had ever known
intimately. She had seen us afar off, and wondered vaguely about us,
consoling herself with the reflection that we probably did not know
enough to be unhappy over our sad lot in life. But here I was,
actually a soul like herself; and it happened that I knew more than