most
whispers:

"You are not jealous?"

I felt myself flushing and would have liked not to answer. But, alas,
would she not by degrees have discovered all the pettiness that is
ill-concealed under my thin veneer of self-control and determination? I
tried to reveal it all in one sentence:

"Know this, Rose, that it is in myself and in myself alone that I study
the women that I would not be!"

4

I watch my great girl while she talks. This rustic beauty, in her cotton
bodice, her blue print skirt and her wooden shoes, no longer shouts. She
expresses herself better and does not gesticulate so violently. She is
quieter in her movements and her shyness is not unattractive. Rays of
light filter through the branches and cast shifting patches of light on
her face and figure. I always love to observe the details of her beauty,
but to-day my heart contracts for a moment as my eyes follow the curve
of her chin, which is charming, but devoid of all firmness, and her
whole profile, which is beautiful, but lacking in decision....

Will Rose be one of those who accomplish themselves by means of love,
who exalt themselves by exalting it, who master and improve themselves
the better to control it?

Love is the great test by which our values are reckoned and weighed. The
fond vagaries of the body have taught the proud soul its limits; and
reason has wilted under a kiss like a flower under the scorching sun.
Every woman has known the exquisite luxury of forgetting herself, of
losing herself so utterly that no other thing at the moment appears to
her worth living for. She has heard the voice of the charmer exhorting
her to abandon pride, ambition, her own personality, to become, in
short, no more than an atom of happiness under a dark and splendid sky
which each moment of felicity seems to adorn with a new star.

Where the weak woman goes under, her stronger sister is never lost. The
lower she may have fallen, the higher she raises herself. She returns
from each of her strayings more fit for life. She is more resisting, for
she has known how to sway and bend without breaking; more indulgent,
because she has seen herself encompassed with weakness and beset with
longings. She knows how frail is the spring that regulates her strength,
but also how necessary that strength is to her happiness. She has come
to understand what real love means, that the union of man and woman
approaches the nearer to perfection the less the two wills a