faith upon? I confess it sometimes seems to me men and women are very
poor creatures. I suppose I'm too romantic and always was. I've an
unfortunate taste for poetic fitness. Life's hard prose, and one must
learn to read prose contentedly. I believe I once supposed all the prose
to be in America, which was very foolish. What I thought, what I
believed, what I expected, when I was an ignorant girl fatally addicted
to falling in love with my own theories, is more than I can begin to
tell you now. Sometimes when I remember certain impulses, certain
illusions of those days they take away my breath, and I wonder that my
false point of view hasn't led me into troubles greater than any I've
now to lament. I had a conviction which you'd probably smile at if I
were to attempt to express it to you. It was a singular form for
passionate faith to take, but it had all of the sweetness and the ardour
of passionate faith. It led me to take a great step, and it lies behind
me now, far off, a vague deceptive form melting in the light of
experience. It has faded, but it hasn't vanished. Some feelings, I'm
sure, die only with ourselves; some illusions are as much the condition
of our life as our heart-beats. They say that life itself is an
illusion--that this world is a shadow of which the reality is yet to
come. Life is all of a piece then and there's no shame in being
miserably human. As for my loneliness, it doesn't greatly matter; it is
the fault in part of my obstinacy. There have been times when I've been
frantically distressed and, to tell you the truth, wretchedly homesick,
because my maid--a jewel of a maid--lied to me with every second breath.
There have been moments when I've wished I was the daughter of a poor
New England minister--living in a little white house under a couple of
elms and doing all the housework."

She had begun to speak slowly, with reserve and effort; but she went on
quickly and as if talk were at last a relief. "My marriage introduced me