ried--tried to make every garden better
than the last. But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone,
and by degrees the handicap of my sex was brought home to me. I did not
feel the pressure at first, and then--I am ashamed to say--it had in it
an element of excitement, a sense of power. The poison was at work.
I was amused. I thought I could carry it through, that the world had
advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the
courage. And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could
impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others....

"As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved
me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and
sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner. It seemed to madden
some men--and the disillusionments began to come. Of course it was
my fault--I don't pretend to say it wasn't. There were many whom,
instinctively, I was on my guard against, but some I thought really
nice, whom I trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected. That was the
terrible thing! And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was..."

Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she
spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.

"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know. At last I met
a man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York,
achieving a reputation as a lawyer. Shall I tell you that I fell in love
with him? He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was
beginning to feel the staleness of it. Not that I surrendered at once,
but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually
disappeared--or rather I ignored them. He had charm, a magnificent
self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he
expressed, in regard to women, most appealed to me. I was weak on that
side, and I have often wondered whether he knew it. I believed him
incapable of a great refusal.

"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my
freedom--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two
before the wedding.... The manner in which he said it suddenly turned me
cold. Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back, to pay
my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I tell