ng event ahead of
me--the one truly interesting experience left to me in this incarnation.

I am not proposing to ask you to see it from my point of view. You
cannot, no matter how willing you are to try. No two people ever see
life from the same angle. There is a law which decrees that two objects
may not occupy the same place at the same time--result: two people
cannot see things from the same point of view, and the slightest
difference in angle changes the thing seen.

I did not decide to come away into a little corner in the country, in
this land in which I was not born, without looking at the move from all
angles. Be sure that I know what I am doing, and I have found the place
where I can do it. Some time you will see the new home, I hope, and
then you will understand. I have lived more than sixty years. I have
lived a fairly active life, and it has been, with all its hardships--and
they have been many--interesting. But I have had enough of the
city--even of Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. Nothing can
take any of that away from me. It is treasured up in my memory. I am
even prepared to own that there was a sort of arrogance in my
persistence in choosing for so many years the most seductive city in the
world, and saying, "Let others live where they will--here I propose to
stay." I lived there until I seemed to take it for my own--to know it on
the surface and under it, and over it, and around it; until I had a sort
of morbid jealousy when I found any one who knew it half as well as I
did, or presumed to love it half as much, and dared to say so. You will
please note that I have not gone far from it.

But I have come to feel the need of calm and quiet--perfect peace. I
know again that there is a sort of arrogance in expecting it, but I am
going to make a bold bid for it. I will agree, if you like, that it is
cowardly to say that my work is done. I will even agree that we both
know plenty of women who have cheerfully gone on struggling to a far
greater age, and I do think it downright pretty of you to find me
younger than my years. Yet you must forgive me if I say that none of us
know one another, and, likewise, that appearances are often deceptive.

What you are pleased to call my "pride" has helped me a little. No one
can decide for another the proper moment for striking one's colors.

I am sure that you--or for that matter any other American--never heard
of Huiry. Yet it is a littl