ld Cleopatra was when she brought Antony to his knees and how
antiquated Ninon D'Enclos was when she lost her power over that
semi-civilized creature known as Man. Gershom will know, for Gershom
knows everything.

_Wednesday the Seventh_

Gershom has been studying some of my carbon-prints. He can't for the
life of him understand why I consider Dewing's _Old-fashioned Gown_ so
beautiful, or why I should love Childe Hassam's _Church at Old Lyme_
or see anything remarkable about Metcalf's _May Night_. But I cherish
them as one cherishes photographs of lost friends.

A couple of the Horatio Walker's, he acknowledged, seemed to mean
something to him. But Gershom's still in the era when he demands a
story in the picture and could approach Monet and Degas only by way of
Meissonier and Bouguereau. And a print, after all, is only a print.
He's slightly ashamed to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending that
at the core of all such things there should be a moral. So we
pow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and the
most I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in _The
Old-fashioned Gown_ reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But all
that talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made me
momentarily homesick for a glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go to
my reward.

But the mood didn't last. And I no longer regret what's lost. I don't
know what mysterious Divide it is I have crossed over, but it seems to
be peace I want now instead of experience. I'm no longer envious of
the East and all it holds. I'm no longer fretting for wider circles of
life. The lights may be shining bright on many a board-walk, at this
moment, but it means little to this ranch-lady. What I want now is a
better working-plan for that which has already been placed before me.
Often and often, in the old days, when I realized how far away from
the world this lonely little island of Casa Grande and its inhabitants
stood, I used to nurse a ghostly envy for the busier tideways of life
from which we were banished. I used to feel that grandeur was in some
way escaping me. I could picture what was taking place in some of
those golden-gray old cities I had known: The Gardens of the
Luxembourg when the horse-chestnuts were coming out in bloom, and the
Chateau de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour, or the Pre Catalan
on a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon and melted butter and a still
more heavenly waltz as