Rachel does--I
really feel as if they were made for each other--but he would have made a
woman of me. I'm honestly glad he is so happy, and things are much more
suitable as they are, for Payson is a thorough-going society man, and
doesn't ask much in a wife or he wouldn't have me, and he doesn't expect
much from a wife or he couldn't get me.

"Perhaps you don't know that a girl who makes a business of wearing scalps
at her belt never stands a bit of a chance with a man she really loves,
for she is afraid to practise on him the wiles which she knows from
experience have been successful with scores of others, because she feels
that he will see through them, and scorn her as she scorns herself in his
presence. She loses her courage, she loses control of herself, and, being
used to depend on 'business,' as actors say, to carry out her role
successfully, she finds that she is only reading her lines, and reading
them very badly too. If you could have seen me with Percival, you would
know what I mean. I was dull, uninteresting, poky--no more the Sallie Cox
that other men know than I am you. He absorbed my personality. I didn't
care for myself or how I appeared. I only wanted him to shine and be his
natural, brilliant self. I never could have helped him in his work. The
most I could have hoped to do would have been not to hinder him. I would
have been the gainer--it would have been the act of a home missionary for
him to marry me."

She laughed drearily.

"Isn't it horribly immoral in me to sit here and talk in this way about a
married man? It's a wonder it doesn't turn the color of the cushions. If
you hear of my having the brougham relined, Ruth, you will know why.
Ruth, I am so miserable at times it seems to me that I shall die. I'd love
to cry this minute--cry just as hard as I could, and scream, and beat my
head against something hard--how do you do, Mrs. Asbury?--but instead, I
have to bow from the windows to people, and remember that I am supposed to
be the complaisant bride-elect of the catch of the season. It is a
judgment on me, Ruth, to find that I have a heart, when I have always gone
on the principle that nobody had any. Yes--how-de-do, Miss Culpepper?
excuse me a minute, Ruth, while I hate that girl. What has she done to me?
Oh, nothing to speak of--she only had the bad taste to fall in love with
the man I am going to marry. Writes him notes all the time, making love to
him, which he promptly shows to me--oh, we