im understand anything else, unless
I told him in so many words."

The tears filled her eyes as she spoke, and hung heavy on the lashes.
Lucy took one of her hands in both of hers, and pressed and stroked it
caressingly.

"I know you could n't, poor dear, I know you could n't," she said; "and
you cannot tell him in so many words because, forsooth, you are a woman.
I often think, Maud, what a heap of trouble would be saved if women,
when they cannot make themselves understood in other ways, were allowed
to speak out as men do, without fear or reproach. Some day they will,
when the world gets wiser,--at least I think so. Why should a woman
have to hide her love, as if it were a disgraceful secret? Why is it any
more a disgrace to her than to a man?"

"I can't quite see what good it would do me," said Maud, "even if women
could 'speak out,' as you say. If a man did n't care for one already,
I can't see how it would make him know that one cared for him. I should
think she would prefer to keep her secret."

"That is n't what men do," replied Lucy. "If they have such a secret,
they tell it right away, and that is why they succeed. The way half the
women are induced to fall in love is by being told the men are in love
with them; you know that."

"But men are different," suggested Maud.

"Not a bit of it: they 're more so, if anything," was the oracular
response of the young wife. "Possibly there are men," she continued,--
"the story-tellers say so, anyhow,--who are attracted by repulsion and
warmed by coldness, who like resistance for the pleasure of overcoming
it. There must be a spice of the tyrant in such men. I wouldn't want to
marry one of them. Fortunately, they're not common. I've noticed that
love, like lightning, generally takes the path of least resistance with
men as well as women. Just suppose now, in your case, that Mr. Burton
had followed us home, and had overheard this conversation from behind
that door."

"No, no," she added laughing, as Maud looked around apprehensively; "he
is n't there. But if he had been there and had overheard you own that
you were pining for him, what a lucky chance it would have been! If he,
or any other man, once knew that a magnificent girl like you had done
him the honor to fall in love with him, half the battle would be won,
or I 'm no judge of men. But such lucky eavesdropping only happens in
stories and plays; and for lack of it this youth is in a fair way to
marry a chit