come to me in perfectness when I was young--love. But I live, I am
well, I am alive to pleasure and pain. How shall I fill up my life but
with the things that still matter to me?"

"You think of marrying, you mean?" Aunt Harriet's voice was dry and
harsh. "Well--I am sure Will would wish your happiness, and I--it
would not be for me to object. Every day it is done, and very often
rightly, I suppose; for money, for companionship, for the chance of
self-development, women marry without love. I--I could only wish you
happiness."

"You--do not understand."

"My dear,"--her voice softened again; something in the pallor and the
quivering pain of the girl touched her,--"I do not mean to speak
hardly to you. It seems to me like this: when it comes to piecing out
a life that has been broken, as yours was--as mine was, my dear, as
mine was--there are two ways of doing it. Either you keep your ideal
of perfect love, and lead your poor every-day life of odds and ends,
like mine, filling your days with the best scraps of pleasure or
usefulness you may, or you give up your ideal of perfect love and
marry, and have your home and your children and your rounded outward
life. There is, maybe, no question of higher or lower. Each one of us
does what her nature bids her. I had always thought of you as one
who--But it is not for me to judge."

Her voice was gentle, and she did not look at Millicent. Her eyes
seemed to pierce the canvas on the opposite wall and the hangings and
the stones behind it, and to see a far image of souls in the struggle
of choice. The woman beside her sat silent, her thoughts with the