was constantly deforming herself;
and I at last gave up the struggle.

Sadly I remember the last pulsation of my will. It happened in the
silence of my heart; and life went on for a little while longer. Would
it not have been hateful to send Rose away, as one dismisses a servant?
And what act, what fault had she committed to deserve such treatment?
When it would have been so sweet to me to give her everything, for no
reason at all, how could I find a solid reason for taking everything
from her?

So I said nothing to her; we had none of those horrible explanations
which set bristling spikes on the barriers--inevitable barriers,
alas!--which dissimilarities in taste or character raise between people.
There are certain persons who cannot bear to make any change without a
preliminary explanation. They seem to carry a sort of map in their
heads: on the far side of the frontier that borders the friendly
territory lies the enemy; and it needs but a word, a gesture, a
difference of opinion for you to find yourself in exile. Alas, have we
not enough with all the limits, demarcations, laws and judgments that
are perhaps necessary to the world at large? And must we lay upon
ourselves still others in the intimate relations of life?

I had no right to set myself up as a judge and I could not have
pronounced sentence. I waited. And, my will being no longer in the way,
circumstances gradually led my companion to her true destiny better than
I could have done.

She was bored. She was not really made to be a purely decorative object.
In spite of her trailing silk or velvet dresses, twenty times a day I
would find her in the larder, with a loaf under her arm and a knife in
her hand, contentedly buttering thick slices of bread, which she would
eat slowly in huge mouthfuls, looking straight before her as she did so.

She was bored; and I was powerless to cure this unfamiliar ill. I looked
out some work for her in my busy life. She wrote letters, kept my
accounts, hemmed the maids' aprons. Soon she was running the errands.
One day she answered the front-door.

I still remember that moment when she came and told me, in her pretty,
gentle way, that there was some one to see me in the drawing-room. I do
not know why, but that insignificant incident suddenly revealed the
truth to me. I was ashamed of myself and turned away my head so that she
should not see me blush. Poor child, she was unconsciously lowering
herself more and more daily