an. How do women find courage, O
God, to take from men who love them the love they gave? No such ordeal
mine?

Farewell, Herbert. Let us think calmly of each other since we have
helped each other for so long a stretch of life. Farewell, dear.

Always your friend,
HESTER STEBBINS.

XXXIX

FROM HESTER STEBBINS TO DANE KEMPTON

STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
December 18, 19--.

Herbert has analyzed the situation and has arrived at the conclusion
that my dissatisfaction arises in an inordinate desire for happiness.
You should not care so much about yourself, he says. Poor, dear, young
Herbert! He is very young and cannot as yet conceive how much there is
about oneself that demands care. I thought it out in the hills to-day.
It was gray and there was a fitful wind. What is this selfishness but a
prompting to make much of life? You and I and people of our kind are old
before our time, that is the reason we are not reckless. Our dreams
mature us. I was a mere girl when Herbert said he wished to marry me,
but I was old enough to grasp the full meaning of the pact, as he could
not grasp it. In a moment I had travelled my way to the grave and back.
I looked at the sheer, quick clouds that flitted past the blue, and I
felt that I had caught up with life; I had overtaken the wonders that
hung in the sky of my dreaming. Then I looked at him and the sunshine
got in my face and made me laugh (or cry)--I was so more than happy,
being so much too sure of his need of me. I am glad I walked to-day. The
view from the hills was beautiful. (You see I am not unhappy!) I stood
on a rock and looked about me, thinking of you, of Barbara,--I feel I
know her,--and of Herbert. He and I had often come to these spots. Oh,
the hungry memories! Yet what were we but a young man and a young woman,
who, without being battered into apathy by misfortune, without being
wearied or ill, were taking each other for better or for worse because
they seemed compatible? We were doing just that, to Herbert's certain
knowledge! I failed him; he hoped for more complaisance. Marriage is a
hazard, Mr. Kempton, confess it is, and a man does much when he binds
himself to make a woman the mother of his children--nay, the grandmother
of theirs, even that. What else and what more? I would never have been
wholly in my husband's life, comrade and fellow to it. Herbert knew this
clearly, and I vaguely but I acted with clearness on my vagueness. It
was hard to do. It has l