an
artist, I would give up all this exceptional good fortune for an
ordinary, humdrum happiness; a good husband, who need not even be a
remarkable combination of excellences, and a few pretty children, who,
for all I care, might be a little bit boisterous and naughty. There,
now you know all about it, and you will laugh at me because I so
naively confessed to you what we women generally hide like a sin."

"You would certainly have made a splendid housewife," said Julie,
musingly. "You are so good, so warmhearted, so unselfish; you might
have made a husband very happy. I--when I compare myself with you--but
why shouldn't we call each other '_du_?' I have had all sorts of
unpleasant experiences with women friends with whom I have used that
familiar form, and that is the reason I have been so slow about it with
you--. Stop, stop, you must leave my head on my shoulders!--you are
squeezing me to death--if I had only known it sooner! And who knows but
what if you learn to know me better--."

The artist had thrown away palette and maulstick, and had, after her
enthusiastic fashion, rushed upon the adored friend who had at last
made this return for her worship.

"If I should know you a hundred years, I'll take care to love you a
hundred times more dearly!" she cried, as, kneeling down before Julie,
she folded her hands in her lap with a droll vivacity, and gazed
reverentially through her spectacles at the beautiful face.

"No," said her friend earnestly, "you do not really know me yet. Have
you any suspicion that by my own fault I have thrown away that
happiness for which you long, because, even as my best friends said, I
was heartless?"

"Nonsense!" cried Angelica. "You heartless? Then I am a crocodile and
live on human flesh!"

Julie smiled.

"Were they right? Perhaps. I don't believe it myself. But you know it
is such a universal fashion to show one's self 'full of heart,' to
express feeling, sympathy, tenderness, even when one remains perfectly
cold, that the Cordelias will always be at a disadvantage. Even when
very young, and perhaps by inheritance from my father, who was a
strict, and on the surface a severe, old soldier, not much given to
demonstrations--even when a school-girl I felt a disgust for sweetness
and suavity, for affected sentimentality and humility--for all that
conventional amiability behind which the most cruel envy, the most icy
egotism, lurk concealed. I could never take kindly to sentimental