known that you were not brilliant, who
would have loved you because you were just amiable and pretty; had your
kingdom been only a farmhouse, where your knowledge of domestic economy,
gained so hardly, would have been useful; where you would have shone
instead of being overshadowed; where Papa would have dropped in of an
evening to smoke his pipe and escape from his domestic wrangles; where
you would have been REAL Queen.

But then you know, dear, you would not have been content. Ah yes, with
your present experience--now you know that Queens as well as little
drudges have their troubles; but WITHOUT that experience? You would have
looked in the glass when you were alone; you would have looked at your
shapely hands and feet, and the shadows would have crossed your pretty
face. "Yes," you would have said to yourself--"John is a dear, kind
fellow, and I love him very much, and all that, but--" and the old
dreams, dreamt in the old low-ceilinged kitchen before the dying fire,
would have come back to you, and you would have been discontented then
as now, only in a different way. Oh yes, you would, Cinderella, though
you gravely shake your gold-crowned head. And let me tell you why. It is
because you are a woman, and the fate of all us, men and women alike, is
to be for ever wanting what we have not, and to be finding, when we have
it, that it is not what we wanted. That is the law of life, dear. Do you
think as you lie upon the floor with your head upon your arms, that you
are the only woman whose tears are soaking into the hearthrug at that
moment? My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City,
peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come
to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of
crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer
it sweetly squeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The
drum lies silent with the drumstick inside; no longer do we make a brave
noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put our
foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged
stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the
wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy cannon has exploded and burnt
our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend
things tomorrow.

And after all, Cinderella dear, you do live in a fine palace, and you
have jewels and grand dresses an