ust ten years older than myself, for by a happy coincidence our
birthdays fell in the same month, and upon the same day of the month,
the twenty-fifth of August.

Aunt Edith was a great comfort to the maiden sisterhood. Spinsters
referred to Edith Mack with a sense of triumph whenever any
disrespectful allusions were cast upon "old maids." She was always
bright, charming and witty, and people wondered, like so many idiots,
why she had never married, instead of wondering why most other women
did. When questioned about it, which was rarely, she usually replied
that she never "had the time," or that she had been "warned in dreams,"
or that she awaited her "king from over the seas"--some such _betise_.
But to me the fact that she had never married was never a matter for
wonder: she had never loved, I supposed, which was reason enough. She
had her work in life--had written two very delightful books, made
occasional illustrations for publishers, and played German music _a
ravir_. At length she spoke, this Aunt Edith.

"Yes, my dear niece, I _have_ some advice to give you," she said in a
low voice: "don't fall in love with a European."

"Do you think there is any danger?" I asked with mock seriousness.

"Not with a Frenchman or German," she quickly replied. "But let me tell
you _my_ experience. I was not far from your age when I went to Europe
with Cousin Helen. I had just refused an offer of marriage from a very
noble fellow because I could not love him. He lacked the power to
control me: I felt myself the stronger of the two. Not that women like
to be ruled, but that they like that power in men which can rule if need
be, generously, but never despotically. I had only in my imagination a
conception of that love 'which passeth understanding'--which lifts a
woman out of herself into a willing sacrifice that looks to calmer eyes
as the height of folly. I liked men well, but none had ever stirred more
than the even surface of my feelings, and I so firmly believed that no
one ever could as to regard my 'falling in love' as most improbable. I
really desired the experience, feeling that something is lost out of
life if every phase of human feeling and emotion be not awakened. But I
went to Europe, and walked straight into my fate.

"The day after my arrival in Paris, in passing through the court of the
hotel where I was stopping, I encountered a gentleman who lifted his
hat, and who looked at me in a manner that caused me to obs