Vanitas

ping her eyes fixed on the rapidly flowing twist of water between the

pant and whirr of a threshing-machine; while from the woods issued the caw of innumerable rooks, blackening the sky. A heron rose from among the reeds of the bank, and mounted, prin

xcept pottery and violin music, come into her existence by the merest accident, and remaining there utterly isolated, she had no experience, save of the vanities of the world. But what struck him most, and seemed to him even more piteous, was her habit of regarding these vanities as matters not of amusement, but of important business. To her, personally, it would seem, indeed, that frocks

and wherefore, and without any blame, the manner in which women may gradually allow men not their husbands to pay their dressmaker's bills, and gradually to become masters of their purse and of themselves: the necessity of a new frock at some race or bal

peculiar, and there are so many things in the world which other folk don't mind, and which I can't bear. I don't like some of their

s which one's neighbours have, whether they give one much pleasure or not, that a woman gets into such false positions, which make people, if things get too obvious, treat her in a beastly, unjust way. But women have always been told that they must have this and that, and go to such and such a house, otherwise they'd not keep up in it all; and then they're fallen upon afterwards. It's awfully unfair. W

for the sake of living like their neighb

his beech tree. Her face bore a curious expression of

et married?" It was as if she had said, Why should a Hindoo widow burn herself? "There must be some inducement," she added, looking into the water and pluck

f life had this girl been forced to look!" And he fel

e river, as if to dismiss the subject, and t

about the Mi

s friends, about everyone who did anything, as i

Holborn, doing all their housework themselves, and yet finding time to work among the poor, to be cultivated

nglish literature she and Clara gave to the shop-girls; and he was a little shocked, when he told her of the young woman from Shoolbred's who had borrowed a volume of Webster, that Val Flodden had never heard of that eminent dramatist, and thought he was the dictionary. He described the little suppers they gave in their big kitchen, where the one or two guests helped to lay the table and to

hemselves," remarked M

ves?" respond

out, like birds beating against cage bars." Then, after a pause, she said vaguely

he wished. "Of course you shall know th

hey would think me a

at's not what I meant. But you must remember that y

rily. "Why must you throw that in my face? You have sai

she was really in earnest, which he occasionally doubted; and also it was a natural reaction against certain cynical assumptions, certain takings for granted on Miss Flodden's part that t

he was

ll exists. In our civilisation, where luxury and the money which buys it go f

exclaimed Miss Flodden, much hurt. "Why, if I don't get married

er remorsefully: "Would you like me to give you a letter for the Miss Carpenters when nex

an to give me a letter-only I fear it will bore them. I shall be going to

, drew out his pocket-book, full of little patterns for

the Miss Carpenter

l have it before I leave. By the way, that train

Flodden. "I wish yo

y walke

e and family, and to the duties and studies which claimed him; he would have starved the affections of the first while neglecting the second. His life must always be a solitary one with his work. But into this rather cheerless solitude, there seemed to be coming something, he could scarcely tell what. Greenleaf believed in the possible friendship between a man and a woman; if it had not existed often hitherto, that was the fault of our corrupt bringing up. But it was possible and necessary; a thing different from, more perfect and more useful, than any friendship between persons of the same sex. But more different still, breezier, more robust and serene, than love even at its best. And had he not always wished for that sister, that Emily