define it; appreciates it, and does not know it. She came to Marion's
room about a half-hour before they were to start for the church. Marion
was already dressed and ready, save for the few final touches, which,
though they have been given a dozen times, must still again be given
just before the bride starts for the church. Such is the anxious mind
of women on these occasions. The two stood and looked at each other a
moment, each wondering what were the thoughts of the other. Lali was
struck by that high, proud look over which lay a glamour of infinite
satisfaction, of sweetness, which comes to every good woman's face when
she goes to the altar in a marriage which is not contingent on the rise
or fall in stocks, or a satisfactory settlement. Marion, looking, saw,
as if it had been revealed to her all at once, the intense and miraculous
change which had come over the young wife, even within the past two
months. Indeed, she had changed as much within that time as within all
the previous four years--that is, she had been brought to a certain point
in her education and experience, where without a newer and deeper
influence she could go no further. That newer and deeper influence had
come, and the result thereof was a woman standing upon the verge of the
real tragedy to her life, which was not in having married the man, but
in facing that marriage with her new intelligence and a transformed soul.
Men can face that sort of thing with a kind of philosophy, not because
men are better or wiser, but because it really means less to them. They
have resources of life, they can bury themselves in their ambitions good
or bad, but a woman can only bury herself in her affections, unless her
heart has been closed; and in that case she herself has lost much of what
made her adorable. And while she may go on with the closed heart and
become a saint, even saintship is hardly sufficient to compensate any man
or woman for a half-lived life. The only thing worth doing in this world
is to live life according to one's convictions--and one's heart. He or
she who sells that fine independence for a mess of pottage, no matter if