go over from
first to last. They're almost worn out now, but I could repeat them all
with my eyes shut. Then, there's a tiny old straw basket with a yellow
wisp in it that once was a bunch of cape jessamines. I wore them to that
last ball--the night before it happened. The fourteenth of May used to
be sad, but now, do you know, I look forward to it! I always have a lot
of jessamines that particular day--I'll have Shirley get me some
to-morrow--and in the evening, when I go down-stairs, the house is full
of the scent of them. All summer long it's roses, but on the fourteenth
of May it has to be jessamines. Shirley must think me a whimsical old
woman, but I insist on being humored."

She was silent a moment, the point of her slender cane tracing circles
in the gravel. "It's a black date for you too, Monty. _I_ know. But men
and women are different. I wonder what takes the place to a man of a
woman's haircloth trunk?"

"I reckon it's a demijohn," he said mirthlessly.

A smile flashed over her face, like sunshine over a flower, and she
looked up at him slowly. "What bricks men are to each other! You and the
doctor were John Valiant's closest friends. What did you two care what
people said? Why, _women_ don't stick to each other like that! It isn't
in petticoats! It wouldn't do for women to take to dueling, Monty; when
the affair was over and done, the seconds would fall to with their
hatpins and jab each other's eyes out!"

He smiled, a little bleakly, and cleared his throat.

"Isn't it strange for me to be talking this way now!" she said
presently. "Another proof that I'm getting old. But the date brings it
very close; it seems, somehow, closer than ever this year.--Monty,
weren't you tremendously surprised when I married Tom Dandridge?"

"I certainly was."

"I'll tell you a secret. _I_ was, too. I suppose I did it because of a
sneaking feeling that some people were feeling sorry for me, which I
never could stand. Well, he was a man any one might honor. I've always
thought a woman ought to have two husbands: one to love and cherish, and
the other to honor and obey. I had the latter, at any rate."

"And you've lived, Judith," he said.

"Yes," she agreed, with a little sigh, "I've lived. I've had Shirley,
and she's twenty and adorable. Some of my emotions creak a bit in the
hinges, but I've enjoyed things. A woman is cat enough not to be wholly
miserable if she can sit in the sun and purr. And I've had people
enou