all girls into marriage, with their will or against their will.
Marriage, marriage, always marriage--always the eternal question of
sex, as if there was nothing else in the world. But there was much
else in life. There was a nobler purpose in life than keeping house
for a man. Of that she felt quite sure, and she hoped that she would
find a vocation. She must first educate herself, so far she knew, and
that was all that was at present necessary for her to know.

'But how hot it is; I shan't be able to go out in the cart to-morrow.
... I wish everything would change, especially the weather. I want to
go away. I hate living in a house without another woman. I wish Harold
would let me have a companion--a nice elderly lady, but not too
elderly--a woman about forty, who could talk; some one like Mrs.
Fargus. When mother was alive it was different. She has been dead now
three years. How long it seems! ... Poor mother! I wish she were here.
I scarcely knew much of father; he went to the city every morning,
just as Harold does, by that dreadful ten minutes past nine. It seems
to me that I have never heard of anything all my life but that
horrible ten minutes past nine and the half-past six from London
Bridge. I don't hear so much about the half-past six, but the ten
minutes past nine is never out of my head. Father is dead seven years,
mother is dead three, and since her death I have kept house for
Harold.'

Then as sleep pressed upon her eyelids Mildred's thoughts grew
disjointed. ... 'Alfred, I have thought it all over. I cannot marry
you. ... Do not reproach me,' she said between dreaming and waking;
and as the purple space of sky between the trees grew paler, she heard
the first birds. Then dream and reality grew undistinguishable, and
listening to the carolling of a thrush she saw a melancholy face, and