my story.

* * * * *

It was nearly the time of falling leaves when the woman, who knew
herself to be a woman, knocked at one of those doors, at which she did
not wish to knock, and was admitted.

It does not matter which of the doors it was. I cannot tell you what
work it was that the woman found to do. What mattered to her--and to
the world if only the world would understand--was this: that she was
forced by the customs of the age and by necessity to enter a life that
her woman heart did not desire. While her dreams were of the life that
lies beyond the old, old, door that has stood open since the
beginning; while she waited on the threshold and longed to go in; she
was forced to turn aside, to seek admittance at one of those other
doors. This it is that matters--matters greatly. Perhaps only God who
made the woman heart and who Himself set that door open wide--perhaps
only God knows how greatly it matters.

Of course, if the woman had not known herself to be a woman, it would
have made little difference either to her or to the world.

And the woman when she had joined that great company of women, who, in
these modern days labor behind the doors through which they must go
alone, found them to be good women--good and brave and true. And most
of them, she found, were in that great company of workers just as she
was there--just as every woman who knows her womanhood is
there--through circumstances, the custom of the age, necessity. The
only saving thing about it all is this: their woman hearts are