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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF
 
 THE 
 
 Woman Herself 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE STUYVESANT PRESS 
 
 1909
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 THE STUYVESANT PRESS 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 Printed in the United States of America
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 October 29th. 
 
 TO-NIGHT we watched a magnificent fire, very 
 close to us. We two were alone on the balcony, 
 detached from everything in the world, it 
 seemed to me, facing the soaring flame. And a 
 kind of spell fell on us, of fascination and fear. 
 The sky turned green, and the moon faded out 
 in the great, ruinous light, and men were fight 
 ing it, and excitement and confusion were every 
 where about us, but we two sat quite quietly on 
 the balcony watching. And I was vaguely sur 
 prised to find myself shaking from head to foot. 
 It wasn't the October frost, it wasn't the fire, 
 but another kind of fear, indefinite and sweet. 
 The flames were enclosing the great mass dome. 
 
 1
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Suddenly it broke into a myriad prism colours 
 aad lights. It was gorgeous beautiful past de 
 scription. I thought of the Kremlin. I looked 
 for the moon it was gone ; for the stars they 
 were blotted out. But close beside me were two 
 eyes warm eyes that humanized the horrible 
 light, and a voice saying : 
 
 " Don't be afraid; there is no danger." 
 
 No danger ! I fetched a long breath and said 
 good-night, and realized that brain and spine 
 were aching as if after a strain. Yet only a 
 shiver had gone over me. 
 
 There are things that can't be told to a third 
 person things between two tangible and dan 
 gerous to them, and too delicate to be put into 
 words to others. People who have lived these 
 things know the signs afar off and the others 
 will find out for themselves. 
 
 I hate women who keep journals they are 
 such egotists. I never kept one before in my 
 life, but the need of a confidant now is com- 
 
 2
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 polling me. It will help me to think out my 
 problem, about which I can't ask any one. 
 
 Here I am, a married woman of twenty-nine, 
 and happily married, too, as the world sees 
 things, for seven years. A comfortable income, 
 a good social position, a man of pleasant tem 
 per, humour and culture, who cares for her 
 what more should a woman want? She 
 shouldn't that's the plain answer, especially 
 when she married him of her own free will and 
 choice, loving him as much as she could love 
 then, with her family's entire approval, and the 
 blessings of friends, spring weather, and Holy 
 Church. All quite as it should be happy and 
 normal and right. I can see it now, that spring 
 wedding day seven pleasant years ago 
 " ideal," the girl friends said. The little church 
 in the Green the sifted sunshine through the 
 stained glass windows, the beckoning of flowers 
 and birds outside and inside the swelling 
 music, the solemn hush. My own slim figure in 
 
 3
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 its trailing satin gown, and grandma's old lace 
 wedding veil, looked unfamiliar. So did the 
 man I met at the altar rail so even did my 
 father's grave, sad eyes. It all seemed unreal, 
 as if it were happening to some one else not 
 to merry little me. I must have looked very 
 solemn about it, as, the ceremony over, we 
 turned to walk out with the great march peal 
 ing after us, for my husband whispered to me : 
 "Cheer up, Old Dear. Don't look as if I had 
 beaten you already!" which of course made 
 me laugh, and, the strain over, we chatted gaily 
 in the carriage. We reached home before the 
 others, and there grandma met us on the ver 
 anda she had been too frail to go to the 
 church ; but she stood erect there on the porch 
 a picture that will never tarnish the sunlight 
 on her silver hair, her face like an old garden, 
 full of wise, sweet paths. She took a hand of 
 each of us, and 
 
 "Now, Mr. Trent," she gravely said, full of 
 4
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 old-fashioned formality, "I say to you as I said 
 to my daughter's husband twenty- two years 
 ago, 'Be good to Junia.' He was good to that 
 Junia be you good to this one." 
 
 And Eichard said "I will" very deeply and 
 she blessed us both. 
 
 I wonder why I recall all this and take the 
 trouble to write it down 1 It is something more 
 than the need of a confidant it is a need of self- 
 expression. There is something in me that 
 longs to express itself in some way and I don't 
 in the least care how, whether I sing, write, 
 paint, act, dance or design in some one of the 
 crafts. I do not care so long as in my work I 
 can express myself in some way. All art calls 
 to me, and all life, joys of the senses, and joys 
 of the soul. 
 
 Well, Dick and I were married and lived hap 
 pily. He was a good bit older than I, and so all 
 the more interesting companion. We went 
 abroad for the usual trip. We were never bored 
 
 5
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 with each other. Our splendid friendship and 
 sense of humour carried us safely through our 
 first quarrel, and we never had but one. After 
 a while we came back from Europe and "set 
 tled down.'* 
 
 Ah, that "settling down" of marriage ! To a 
 girl, passionless and undeveloped, the first feel 
 ing of marriage is of an extraordinary intimacy 
 with a stranger. She has married for "love," 
 she thinks, and in a sentimental, idealistic way 
 perhaps she really feels it. The pleasure that 
 her lover's kiss gives her she imagines (shyly 
 and to herself alone) is "passion." Her sense 
 of sex is asleep, and awakes slowly. In my case 
 it didn't seem to awake at all. Tenderness, af 
 fection, admiration, comradeship all these 
 were there from the first and never failed ; but 
 well, anyway we "settled down" and lived 
 happily. We danced, rode, golfed, bridged, and 
 dined with the rest of our set. Our Sundays got 
 to be the thing. Nearly every one we drew 
 
 6
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 around us was Somebody in the world of art 
 or letters or life. And Richard and I were 
 really happy. "We used to wish often that others 
 would come to share our home but they never 
 did. And I used to wonder and worry as to 
 the why. With such splendid health, so good 
 an inheritance of every kind to pass on, chil 
 dren never came to us. 
 
 But the happy years went by, and except for 
 these secret wonders of mine they went 
 smoothly. 
 
 And then which is now! 
 
 Mrs. Chester asked us down tc her place to 
 see her celebrated amateurs play "Paolo and 
 Francesca." She had some interesting people 
 staying with her, so I was glad to go. But at 
 the last moment Dick was called West on busi 
 ness for his firm, and I had to go alone. I ar 
 rived too late for dinner, and by the time I had 
 dressed, the play was on. My hostess' younger 
 son found me a seat in the box reserved for 
 
 7
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 the family, and in a few moments Mrs. Chester 
 came in. She's a dear person, full of pleasant 
 worldiness, a patron of all the arts, and much 
 beloved by the large circle in which she moves. 
 I had seen her amateurs play before several 
 times, for it was one of Mrs. Chester's pet in 
 terests. She is even able occasionally to secure 
 a professional actor or actress, generally to play 
 some rare role, the mere reading of which is 
 a delight, and which must be a great joy to 
 create. Sometimes she has been able to secure 
 the wonderful combination of a great author, a 
 distinguished actor, and an unproduced play, 
 and with these she gets up an entertainment on 
 a large scale for charity thus combining her 
 ambition as a patron of the arts, and her benefi 
 cence as a great giver to large charities. It is 
 wonderful what money and brains can do. She 
 came into the box and sank down into the seat 
 beside me with a sigh of relief. 
 "My dear," she said, "we have had such a 
 8
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 fright: the Paolo Ted Eedmond yelled him 
 self hoarse at the Harvard- Yale game yester 
 day stupid boy! caught cold, and by to-day 
 wasn't able to speak above a whisper. I don't 
 know what we should have done to-night if it 
 hadn't been for the Comte de Toreyne. He is 
 visiting the Van Nesses, you know, and as he 
 had seen the play several times in London he 
 was more or less familiar with it, and able to 
 learn it quickly. I've just been behind the 
 scenes to see if I could help, and he isn't a bit 
 nervous. Do you know him?" she suddenly 
 asked. 
 
 "No," I said without any especial curiosity, 
 though I like foreigners, as a general rule. They 
 are so very different from our men taking 
 serious things so lightly, and light things so 
 seriously. 
 
 "Well," Mrs. Chester continued, "he is the 
 most fascinating man I have met in a long time. 
 Everybody is crazy about him; of course, par 
 ticularly the women. Mrs. Van Ness met him 
 
 9
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 in Paris the Van Nesses have a house there, 
 you know and invited him to visit them this 
 season. I fancy she wants him for her daugh 
 ter Ethel, who 's playing Francesca, by the way. 
 She looks lovely has the hair, but not the tem 
 perament. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," I said, "Ethel is cold and sweet; but 
 she ought to read well. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, read!" interrupted Mrs. Chester with 
 scorn. "She has intelligence appreciation, 
 even and that lovely red-gold hair; but the 
 passion, the fervour, the beauty of the Italian 
 Francesca well, I didn't realize what she 
 lacked till I heard the Comte. Wait till the 
 curtain rises again and you'll see." 
 
 It was just about to rise on the exquisite gar 
 den scene. I watched the two lovers drawing ir 
 resistibly together; the threads of their desti 
 nies subtly touching mingling enfolding. A 
 lightning touch and a thunder sequence ! Ah, 
 I thought, they are happiest who only know the 
 
 10
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 beginnings especially in love. And then ' ' like 
 to music heard ere birth," came a wonderful 
 voice, saying wonderful words : 
 
 "Thy face remembered is from other lives 
 It has been fought for, though I know not where; 
 It has been died for, though I know not when" 
 
 and I knew before I heard it, her answer: 
 
 "I lie out on your arm and say your name Paolo! Paolo!" 
 
 and like two angels, lifted into entire rapture, 
 they passed from our sight behind the gold 
 curtains that hid their love's surrender. . . . 
 Dimly, after an interval, I became conscious 
 of the enthusiasm about me; all these cultured 
 people old and young were applauding vig 
 orously, but there was a strange stillness in me, 
 a hush, an expectancy. I saw Ethel Van Ness 
 stand gaily bowing to her many friends not 
 Francesca now receiving armfuls of flowers, 
 and retiring. And while the tumult in the 
 theater continued, the stillness in me increased ; 
 
 11
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 and then You came not you as the Comte de 
 Toreyne but you as the Paolo of the past 
 bringing with you still an atmosphere of the 
 iplay, as you gravely bowed ; and some force of 
 feeling within me thrilled toward you, and drew 
 your eyes to mine for a second. Perhaps there 
 was a tribute in my look, for your acknowledg 
 ment was the very grace of courtesy before 
 you bowed and withdrew. 
 
 And I heard Mrs. Chester enthusing : ' ' Such 
 magnetism! such charm! Why aren't there 
 more men like that? It does seem as if the 
 Latin races had a monopoly of them, doesn't 
 it? He is the most enormous success! But 
 Ethel! She's a beautiful marble statue, and 
 that's all. Oh, I'm so glad Ted Redmond 
 strained his voice fancy him playing Paolo! 
 My dear, I shall give this same entertainment 
 over again next week for the benefit of the crip 
 pled children and you must play Francesca ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't!" I said, aghast. 
 12
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 "Why not?" demanded the great Mrs. Ches 
 ter in her forceful way. "You have the tem 
 perament it's much more important than the 
 hair!" 
 
 I laughed at that. 
 
 "Wait till you meet the Comte at supper," 
 she continued. "I'll get him to persuade you, 
 and I rely on you to persuade him. I haven't 
 given anything to those crippled children or 
 is it the blind beggars? for tw.o years!" 
 
 Mrs. Chester always gets mixed up in her 
 philanthropies, but never in anything else I 
 fancy the other things interest her more. 
 
 "I don't even want to meet him," I said 
 irresolutely. 
 
 "Why not?" exclaimed Mrs. Chester. 
 
 "Oh, he's bound to be disappointing after 
 this!" 
 
 My friend laughed gaily. 
 
 " Junia, you are just a big schoolgirl in some 
 ways, still," she said. "How can it matter to 
 
 13
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 you if lie is disappointing! You silly idealist! 
 But lie isn't he's utterly charming; brilliant, 
 audaciously witty the best type of his race 
 and his is a fine old family, though I don't think 
 he has much else in the world. ' ' 
 
 Afterward when Mrs. Chester presented him 
 to me, I saw a slender figure of medium height 
 with broad shoulders and the finest head in 
 the world. I saw an unusual face eyes set wide 
 apart, of an indefinite, moss-brown colour, 
 under odd brows one quite level, one slightly 
 arched a short, straight nose, and lips of ex 
 treme delicacy, thin and beautifully shaped. 
 The mouth was the dominant feature, showing 
 individuality more clearly than any other. It 
 looked both tender and cruel both pliable and 
 obstinate both gentle and hard. And somehow 
 I felt that this man was two men and could be 
 either or both, as life and fate should decide. 
 And I also noticed with a shock that Paolo had 
 hair greying at the temples, and that this added 
 
 14
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 to the individuality and enhanced the beauty of 
 the face. I saw these things quite clearly, but 
 over and above them I felt the man himself 
 speaking through every agent of expression, of 
 line and colour, of voice and manner and car 
 riage. And I saw that women would suffer for 
 him and he be all unconscious ; that men would 
 hate and he disregard their hatred ; that chil 
 dren would love him, and animals obey him, and 
 he accept them both as tributes to himself for 
 when men magnetize people in all these ways 
 it is through the force of their selfhood. I am 
 only thinking this out definitely for the first 
 time, but I felt it then, as he took my hand and 
 bowed over it. 
 
 And afterward in my room I sat wondering. 
 Felice brushed out my hair in her satisfying 
 way, and chatted discreetly. Had madame had 
 a pleasant evening? Madame seemed a little 
 quiet and tired could she do anything for 
 madame ? 
 
 15
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 When she had gone "madame" leaned for 
 ward and surveyed herself in the glass. Nine- 
 and-twenty well, no one would believe it. I 
 looked several years younger than that. I have 
 often wondered if I am beautiful one can say 
 it here without fear of being misjudged. I stood 
 up and turned to look over my shoulder at my 
 self. The turn threw out every line of my figure, 
 and I saw with pleasure that they were all 
 straight and slender and graceful even more 
 even yes alluring. And when I saw that, 
 something laughed out of my eyes, and I was 
 glad ! How vain this is ! how light ! But well, 
 one can be honest to oneself, at least. My hair 
 is nearly as dark as the Comte's, and my eyes 
 are darker, and also set far apart. I wondered 
 if I should dare play Francesca with him and 
 when I slept at last I went straight into a beau 
 tiful dream, in which we two walked through 
 haunted halls, our arms about each other ; eyes 
 on eyes and heart on heart. I had no sense 
 
 16
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 of shame it seemed natural and right. My own 
 old personality simply dropped from me like 
 a dress outworn and I was this man's and he 
 was mine as it had been before as it would 
 be again. 
 
 November 5th. 
 
 But of course it was all quite different the 
 next day when he came over to call, and to dis 
 cuss with Mrs. Chester plans for her next en 
 tertainment, which she desires to give. I for 
 get for whose benefit this time, but it has to take 
 place within the next two weeks, before every 
 one returns to town. The Van Nesses have to 
 go, so it is arranged the Comte shall join Mrs. 
 Chester's house-party till the end of the month. 
 And that is the beginning. 
 
 The first days flew by with the reading of 
 the play a wonderful, new play, by a still more 
 wonderful author. Some great actress who can 
 be more people than one, will play it one day 
 this great, three-fold story. It is called the 
 
 17
 
 "Soul's Pilgrimage," and shows the struggle of 
 people through several lives, at several differ 
 ent periods of the earth 's history. It is full of 
 Eastern atmosphere and philosophy. At first I 
 am an empress loving lust and power and the 
 beauty and glory of the material world steal 
 ing men's souls from them, and, Circe-like, turn 
 ing them into brutes. One who loves me I wound 
 to the death, and, too late, try to undo my 
 wrong. In the next act incarnation, life I am 
 a peasant girl with a heart of gold and he, in 
 stead of being lowly born, is a lord, who mis 
 treats me. I die for him in absolute devotion 
 expiating the wrong I did in the past life the 
 previous act. In the third act we start equal 
 modern man and modern woman with modern 
 problems to solve and that's the story, the real 
 story. The rest is atmosphere, background, 
 motive twilit ages, evolving principles, the 
 strain that is akin to all ages and all peoples 
 running through the whole the Struggle Up. 
 
 18
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Some call it Evolution, 
 And others call it God." 
 
 The actor whom Mrs. Chester asked down to 
 assist us in "putting it on," says the first act 
 is fine melodrama the second, poetic tragedy 
 the third he throws up his hands and says it 
 is something between a play, a menagerie, and a 
 Wagnerian opera score, and that it would re 
 quire a genius or a madman to properly pro 
 duce it. (I think he's the latter.) But the 
 author has taken up motive after motive, thread 
 after thread, woven them in, finished them off. 
 It is as interesting as fairyland or the Bible 
 and almost as hard to believe. 
 
 But I accept it without thinking just throw 
 ing myself into the spirit of the part each part 
 three women one soul and its progress 
 through the ages to where we are with a hint i* 
 of what's beyond. 
 
 And I am as happy as a schoolgirl these 
 splendid autumn days. Since the night of the 
 
 19
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 fire, when the wharf -houses and the ship burned, 
 we two, the Comte and I, have seemed to share a 
 secret yet there is nothing really it is only 
 
 "Eyes on eyes! and voices breaking still, 
 For all the watchful will, 
 Into a kinder kindness than seems due 
 From you to me, and me to you." 
 
 Already! And I have only known him seven 
 days ! 
 
 November 6th. 
 
 Only seven days! I wrote that yesterday, 
 and now I am trying to realize that it is so 
 short a time. It seems as if we had known each 
 other always. Of course we have been together 
 almost constantly, rehearsing, and the play has 
 led to intimate talks. But still our mutual sym 
 pathy and understanding is wonderful. Even 
 Enid Cross is noticing it. Enid is my best 
 friend, of course, and a dear among women ; but 
 best friends have sharp eyes, and she isn't yet 
 so absorbed in her love affair with Ted Eed- 
 
 20
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 mond as to be wholly oblivious of me. It is an 
 noying to be given advice by one's juniors. 
 Enid is seven years younger let me remember 
 that for my chastisement. To-day she said: 
 
 " Junia, if you weren't married, I should say 
 you have made the catch of the season before 
 the season really begins ; but as you are, don't 
 let the Comte become serious men are so pecu 
 liar, you know. ' ' 
 
 And I answered, quite vexed: "Don't be ri 
 diculous, Enid; it's childish to imagine two 
 grown-up people are serious because they have 
 a pleasant friendship and much in common. ' ' 
 
 Enid answered wickedly: " Everything in 
 common except your husband and his wife ! ' ' 
 
 "Has he got one?" I asked, aghast. 
 
 "He did have, but whether she's dead or di 
 vorced I don't know. Anyway, you've got Rich 
 ard " 
 
 Dear old Dick ! I hadn't even thought of him 
 for three days ! 
 
 21
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 All this is appalling. If there were any one 
 on earth I could tell it to, I shouldn't be writing 
 it here but I can't speak of it even to Enid. A 
 girl brought up, as she is, in an absolutely con 
 ventional way, is really the best friend for me, 
 I suppose. Her worldly sense and discretion 
 balance my lack of both. 
 
 Yet it isn't that I despise conventionality 
 only I disregard it. She is just the right mix 
 ture of sentiment and sense. 
 
 But what is happening to me ? I am not my 
 self any more I have not my own old thoughts 
 and gaiety and spirit. I feel very still. What 
 is different in me? It is as if I had changed 
 the furnishings of all my house, and no longer 
 recognized it in its new aspect. It is like that 
 in my mind it is happy heavenly happy ; but 
 the thoughts the feelings the motives of it 
 are new to me. I sit in this new house of my 
 mind, and I see that it is very still and wait 
 ing for what? 
 
 22
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Meanwhile our work goes on, on the play. 
 Enid and Ted Redmond are charming as the 
 old-world lovers. Theirs is the light and happy 
 love theme; ours the deeper, sadder one. The 
 Comte handles his part wonderfully with such 
 conviction, such grace, such poetry and suggest- 
 iveness. When I look at him I do not wonder 
 women adore him. Poor women! They see so 
 few men beautiful enough to worship, accom 
 plished enough to admire, fine enough in tex 
 ture to compare with themselves. Ted is an 
 ordinary type very attractive just now be 
 cause he's young and vital, an athlete and a 
 gentleman, because he hasn't yet lost his pris 
 tine faith in life and ideals. But in five years 
 he will be dulled; in ten satiated; in fifteen in 
 terested only in business; and in twenty fat 
 and boring and beefy in the prime of life ! So 
 it goes. Because he hasn't temperament, 
 poetry, the wide culture of romance. And Enid 
 with her music and fire, and charm how will 
 
 23
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 it be with her if she marries him? He'll make 
 her a good husband he'll be loyal and stolid 
 and true. But interesting? Lord preserve me ! 
 But as my old-fashioned grandmother would 
 have said and I believe it was her beau-ideal 
 of a man: 
 
 "He'll be a good provider." 
 
 Materially, yes; but mentally? "Won't she go 
 hungry of heart? And how will it be with her 
 then? Hush! How is it with me? 
 
 November 7th. 
 
 I had a letter from Dick to-day, in which he 
 mentions the Comte. "I'm rather surprised," 
 he wrote, "to hear he's Mrs. Chester's guest, 
 for he hasn't the best reputation in the world. 
 A man is generally judged by the way he treats 
 women and I gather De Toreyne has not treat 
 ed them very well. He belongs to a fast Euro 
 pean set, and I hate to think of your ever being 
 mixed up with them. I shall be back next week 
 
 24
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 and want you at home. I have succeeded in 
 establishing the Chicago and St. Louis connec 
 tions, and " 
 
 The rest was business and bored me, and the 
 first disturbed me. But after all, what does it 
 matter? The play will be over in another week, 
 and so will so will everything else. 
 
 But I can't believe the Comte is anything but 
 what he seems, and that is why, almost a boy ! 
 He is the very incarnation of the Spirit of 
 Youth, confident yet strangely unconfident, gay 
 yet melancholy which is like youth, too full 
 of contradictions, of variety. He had an En 
 glish mother, he told me. That mixture of races 
 would account for the elusive double nature I 
 feel in him. He has a personality that is close 
 to genius. He writes beautiful verse, he knows 
 music can both write and execute it. He 
 speaks three languages easily, and knows the 
 literature of each. With such a brain and tem 
 perament he should produce something, stand 
 
 25
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 for something in the world of art. I wonder if 
 he will? 
 
 Some day he will tell me his story why he is 
 here what his hopes and plans are and many 
 other things. 
 
 November 9th. 
 "We sat late, late, talking of many things," 
 
 after the others had gone, and the fire had died, 
 and the wintry dawn had begun. You make my 
 heart ache with your story. "Mother, and 
 child, and friends but a man needs something 
 more." Dear, dark head, did you really lie in 
 my lap for a moment and confess that or was 
 it a part of the unbidden dream that sat at my 
 feast of memory afterward? I am full of 
 troubled happiness ; your tears have drawn mine 
 the first I have shed in years in a passion of 
 pity for you. Your heart has drawn mine and 
 your lips. Would I could help you would I 
 could give you all you need if I am the * * some- 
 
 26
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 tiling more" but it is not mine to give. I'm 
 already given in marriage though I know now 
 I am not possessed. Ah, Sweet, there are des 
 tinies that should never cross, and ours belong 
 to that kind. They meet like flint on steel, but 
 the spark leaves both cold until they meet again 
 unless they meet again. I would you might 
 kiss me good-night, and say again I am "The 
 Blessed." 
 
 November 10th. 
 
 Too happy a week to write about. How our 
 friendship grows ! We are so alike, we two, in 
 many ways, in our humour, in our melancholy, 
 in our splendid animal spirits, in our tastes and 
 natures only I haven't your brilliancy of brain, 
 and I suspect, dear gentleman, you haven't my 
 depth of heart. Yours is like spring full of 
 lilt and change and everlasting youth. The fall 
 is closing into winter. 
 
 "November, the old, lean widow, 
 Sniffs, and snivels, and shrills," 
 
 27
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 but a merry little moon looks whistfully down 
 on us o ' nights, and there are the cozy twilights 
 and the good talks. Oh, what have I ever done 
 ,to deserve such happiness? 
 
 December 6th. 
 
 "We have been walking on a precipice in the 
 dark! Suddenly came a light, and showed us 
 where we were and then an instant of dizzi 
 ness and suspense and I felt myself falling, 
 falling and then I opened my eyes with a long 
 shudder and found myself safe still on the 
 edge, but still safe. I am so afraid! If one 
 should become so fascinating by gazing, that 
 nothing in the world should seem so worth while 
 as to explore those depths ! 
 
 We are too near the brink, Heart's Heart. 
 
 When you said to me: "How I want you 
 how I need you ! " it was a cry from the heart 
 and I felt that I was mean and stingy to with 
 hold myself from you. When I remember the 
 
 28
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 hunger of your look, I am dizzy again. It was 
 such a little moment we were left together a 
 little moment ticked out in heart-beats. 
 
 Great red roses full of scent and colour were 
 in the room. The sense of them wrapped me 
 about to exclusion like music like prayer. 
 There was soft starlight without and a silent 
 house. And the great need between us grew till 
 it swept up together who knows how? and I 
 heard you whisper, as your arms crushed me:/ 
 
 ' ' Give yourself to me. ' ' 
 
 I loved the delirium and pain of your entire 
 embrace, but after a second I put it from me, 
 my hand against your breast, and stood apart 
 from you, and reaching deep for breath I heard 
 my heart say : 
 
 "I would give my body for your delight, and 
 my whole soul for your service, if I could with 
 out hurting you without calling you from your 
 best and highest." I was hardly conscious the 
 words had passed my lips until you caught my 
 
 29
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 hands, bowed your head in them, and dropped 
 to your knees before me. 
 
 A "I am yours," you said, ''in whatever way 
 you will. Yours to love and have, or yours to 
 love and leave. And you are mine my great 
 lady. What will you have of me?" 
 
 You were still kneeling with your head against 
 my hand, and I answered: 
 
 "Your chivalry to my weakness that longs 
 to meet your need, but may not 'lest other eyes 
 go weep and other lives lie broken.' Help me, 
 like a true gentleman like a Chevalier!" And 
 I made you rise and face me. 
 
 "Is that what you really want?" you asked 
 keenly. "No; but it's what I want to want," 
 I confessed, and you smiled into my eyes, an 
 swering : 
 
 "I will be your Chevalier, then, your true 
 knight, till you want of me something else!" 
 
 What splendid audacity he has ! 
 30
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 November 13th. 
 
 It is late, late, and I am sitting alone watch 
 ing the dawn creep in. The play is over over 
 and done. They said it was a great success. 
 They said the audience was electrified at the 
 close of the second act, when the peasant girl 
 climbs up upon the cross where her lover is 
 hung that his agony may be mitigated by the 
 last touch of her lips. He has been a thief, and 
 a traitor, and hanging is none too bad for him 
 yet he has held her to death and beyond. She 
 kisses him, and kills him to end his agony and 
 for this the multitude stones her to death. I 
 remember crying out in a gasp: "You cannot 
 hurt him, you God-accursed! For I, who love 
 him, have killed him ! ' ' And then the cry of her 
 departing spirit: "Ernando! Ernando! wait, 
 I am coming! wait for your little Manelle!" 
 The last picture is of her defending him with 
 her body from the assaults of the mob her arms 
 stretched along his arms, her breast against his. 
 
 31
 
 I only know I was half dead and shuddering 
 when the curtain fell. I had lived it to the last 
 ounce in me, and would have fainted if you had 
 not held me, brought me back by your warm 
 magnetism. But when I reached my dressing- 
 room I was trembling, throbbing with the strug 
 gle to keep something down in me that would 
 beat against the bars of my heart like a wild 
 animal.. I sent Felice away lest she should see 
 should guess. 
 
 Well, it is over all over this strange, wild 
 thing that has come into my life. Soon we will 
 go on our separate ways. Yet since your con 
 fession since my reply since our triumph over 
 ourselves how I love you! how I love you! 
 ' * Oh, a thousand times ! " as you said. I am not 
 ashamed to write it, since I can write it with 
 out shame. We faced our temptation and with 
 stood it ; an honest man, an honest woman. And 
 now it is over. I have no more fear. Soon I 
 shall go back to my home, take up my life, live 
 
 32
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 it, fill it, as best I may. And you will go back 
 to your beautiful art, my Poet, my Painter, and 
 both life and art will be the richer because we 
 have loved each other, yet have not smirched 
 that love. You have meant to me the poetry of 
 the world. "The vision and the dream" of a 
 man strong, yet beautiful ; fine, yet full of weak 
 ness ; gifted of the gods, yet squandering those 
 gifts like a child. You cry out to the latent 
 motherhood in me, as well as to the waking, pas 
 sionate woman. By all roads you reach my soul 
 yet, good-night good-by! It is like saying 
 good-by to youth but we must. No, it is not 
 "worse than that," as you said; it is that 
 Youth is over gone with your last kiss out of 
 my life. Good-by! God love you as I may 
 not! 
 
 December 10th. 
 
 So now we are to be friends. Why not, since 
 the greater contains the less? 
 
 33
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 December 20th. 
 
 Since we all have returned to town, and meet 
 but seldom, I miss you, dear my friend, I miss 
 you more when I am with you in the company 
 of others than when I am without you in the 
 company of my thoughts of you. This evening 
 in your rooms how pleasant it was ! Even Dick 
 liked you. Your thought of us each in books 
 with the marked passages that catch the eye 
 suited to each your narcissus blossoms which 
 I love so much, and your dear charm pervading 
 it all, yet 
 
 Christmas twilight and soon your step on 
 the stairs the rapid step I know so well. No 
 Christmas was ever so happy as this in which 
 you come to my house. . . . 
 
 Later. And there you were, dear lad, with 
 your merry eyes and your quick, warm kiss, 
 and your arms full of plum-pudding! Fancy 
 your making it for me yourself sacred be the 
 bowl that holds it ! 
 
 34
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 How happy we were * ' all among the red ber 
 ries" and boughs, in front of the fire that 
 warmed the twilit room! And that magnetic 
 moment when we two were alone, and you kissed 
 me suddenly under the mistletoe! I tried to 
 laugh it off: "Oh, well, since it isn't real," 
 I said, and you interrupted : 
 
 "But if it is real!" 
 
 "Is it, dear gentleman?" I just breathed. 
 
 "You know." 
 
 Out of the warm twilight came these words 
 of wonder. Your love for me real! real! It 
 cannot be, yet I hug them to my heart, and live 
 them over and over. They flash in the dusk of 
 my brain like jewels, and their setting is your 
 arms their gold your voice their light your 
 eyes their warmth your lips on mine. 
 
 Oh, though we may never be anything to each 
 other but friends yet touch of hand, and eyes 
 on eyes! We shall know! 
 
 "Never has any one come so close," you said. 
 35
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I shall still be '''close" to you, Beloved, wher 
 ever you go, though I never see you. I will watch 
 your career, and help it and you in every way I 
 
 can. And for love of you there is no weary man 
 I 
 
 or woman, or little child, in all the world, who 
 shall not share my bounty, when they need it 
 and I can give it. For love of you, every sinner, 
 every enemy, shall have a second chance and 
 a third and a seventy-seventh, as I would that 
 every one should give to you ! For love of you 
 all music is deeper, is richer, and the hearts 
 that love me, and that I love, have become trans 
 figured. Oh, for love of you, all attainment is 
 possible and worth accomplishing, just for the 
 sake of a light in your eyes, as they rest on me 
 in some moment God will give me in the far 
 years when I shall say to Him : 
 
 * ' Oh, if this that I have done is worthy, let it 
 count to him who inspired it all, who was my 
 star to steer by my music on the march my 
 crown of compensation at the end. ' ' 
 
 Would I might lead my king to his crowning ! 
 36
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 January 15th 
 
 Dear day ! How I hate to see you die ! You 
 were the quintessence of youth and joy. Four 
 of us Enid and Ted and you and I all in one 
 mood ; the music, the laughter, the teasing the 
 fun that is the salt of life. And then the tremu 
 lous, fateful twilight hour when we had sepa 
 rated into couples. "It isn't fair to me, and 
 I am going away," you said. "Come," and 
 held open the door for me. What perversity 
 was it that made me deliberately turn my back 
 upon it and walk over to the window? And 
 what made you say in the dusk out of the si 
 lence : 1 1 Oh, my dear ! We are here such a little 
 while and young such a little part of that 
 can't we be good?" What tempter made me 
 answer: "Oh, don't philosophize live!" How 
 frightened I was at my own words, until I felt 
 myself 1 rocked in your arms, and your lips on 
 mine just breathing : ' ' That 's what I wanted to 
 do." 
 
 37
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 Did you lead me, or did I lead you? It was 
 you who said : ' ' Oh, how much we missed when 
 we were together ! ' ' and I who answered : * ' Let 
 us miss no more, then. Let us live our life so 
 that when we look back we can say ' We had our 
 hour'." 
 
 "Are you sure you will never regret it?" you 
 asked me, and I answered: "Ah, yes all my 
 life! But we shall have had an hour worth a 
 whole life's regret." 
 
 "Do you want that hour soon to-morrow?" 
 That overwhelmed me. I had not thought of 
 anything so immediate, so definite as that. * ' No, 
 no, ' ' I said ; ' ' for when I have had you it will 
 be over. I shall lose you. We shall grow 
 apart. ' ' 
 
 "No," you said, "that sort of thing brings 
 people closer together. But will I still be your 
 'dear gentleman,' your Chevalier? Oh, don't 
 take your good opinion away from me. I need 
 it. I need it. ' ' 
 
 38
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 And then the others came in, and we went 
 away; but as you put my cloak on, you whis 
 pered an appointment. What will come of it I I 
 dare not think of next Tuesday night a sudden 
 weakness comes over me when I do. 
 
 / "A sigh sent wrong, 
 
 A kiss that goes astray, 
 A sorrow the year's end long, 
 So they say. 
 
 So let it be! 
 
 Come the sorrow, the kiss, the sigh! 
 They are life, dear life, all three; 
 And we die. 
 
 January 19th 
 
 I am waiting for you all alone oh, I am long 
 ing for you ! Your voice, your eyes, your arms ! 
 Your voice on the stairs, your eyes in the door 
 way, your arms just over the threshold my 
 Love my Joy of Life ! I am in a delirium, but 
 it is not all happiness it is fear, suspense ; yet 
 it is like a bride's, my heart. I have put on my 
 prettiest gown, all white lace and ruffles, as you 
 like it and with a suggestion of green, as you 
 
 39
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 like it, too. Oh, shall I be beautiful in your 
 sight, Beloved? Others say so, but will you? I 
 must ask you this some time. I have always 
 forgotten it before, and you have forgotten to 
 tell me. We have had so much more important 
 things to talk about God bless us ! 
 
 How beautiful the room looks as it waits 
 waits for you ! The flowers, the ferns, the fire 
 light, the wee white kitten and the big collie 
 playing sweetly together oh, I feel as if the 
 common old things are alive for this once and 
 know you are coming, and are glad with me ; for 
 my Heart's Desire is my own at last, and "his 
 desire is toward me." 
 
 There is your ring. You are early, Beloved, 
 as lovers should be, and my arms they are open 
 to you. 
 
 "I am my Beloved's, and his desire is toward 
 me." 
 
 Well, I did not count the cost. 
 40
 
 I gave myself, my best, my truest, to your 
 "heart's need" as you said. That was an 
 appeal, Chevalier! Stronger women than I 
 would have been obliged to yield to it. 
 
 What a great gap the threshold bridged ! But 
 once over it ''I love you, and I shall not be 
 sorry." The world swam for a moment, then 
 faded utterly, and there was left only you only 
 you. 
 
 Ah, that threshold ! What different things it 
 separated! On the one side the past and the 
 peace of goodness with the pain of desire. On 
 the other, joy and the price of joy. It is a 
 great price, but it is worth it, because it is the 
 most precious thing in all the world. 
 
 To-night my life's emotions reached high- 
 water mark. I did not know we could feel such 
 joy while we are still mortals. Oh, come what 
 may, I shall never regret it. You have shown 
 me the reality of things everything else is un 
 real. 
 
 41
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "These things are awakenings, and one 
 doesn't awake all at once," you said. 
 
 Good-night. I am full of pain that is torture 
 pain that is ecstasy pain of your giving, 
 therefore most precious. What was once my 
 brain, separate, distinct, is submerged in this 
 ocean of feeling a powerless, buried continent. 
 What was my body is beyond my volition, and 
 what was my heart is yours. My last strong 
 holds gone ! You are an obsession your spirit 
 on mine, like the sun on the earth. I have no 
 feeling apart from you. This is the miracle, 
 complete and overwhelming, of which I've 
 heard, but never known till now. I knew I 
 should one day. I knew you would come. And 
 though I heard your step go down the stairs, 
 and leaned over the bannisters to drink in the 
 last look of your upturned eyes, to my thought 
 you are here still, so real, that in my bed, with 
 its one pillow, I shall fall asleep in your arms. 
 I have the sense of them all about me, and put 
 
 42
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 down my pen to yield to you and sleep. Be 
 loved my well Beloved ! 
 
 January 27th. 
 
 "I gazed into the mist, and fear came on me; 
 Then said the mist: ' I weep for the lost sun.' " 
 
 "Every meanest day is the conflux of two 
 eternities." 
 
 The eternity of the past the eternity of the 
 future and to-day, the slim bridge between 
 them. The bridge shall break and cast us into 
 one or the other of these abysses. But to-day, 
 at least, shall not endure. Terrible to-day ! Go, 
 go, and let me forget your ignobility. Since this 
 that is all to me is worth no sacrifice to you, you, 
 too, my love, must go. Our ways divide. You 
 "will take no risk," you say, "for my sake." 
 So! You mean you will dare nothing. I am 
 not worth it to you. And do you know what I 
 would dare ? I would dare to go to him and say : 
 "Set me free, for my heart is not in my mar- 
 
 43
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 
 riage. Forgive me, amd set me free." And he 
 would do it. But since you will not let me do 
 this, it must be good-by for us. Oh, what can we 
 save from the wreck of our hearts? Isn't there 
 any driftwood even to be picked up and made 
 into a little fire to warm our cold souls by? 
 
 February 24th. 
 
 The day is over and the night has come. 
 sweet, swept sky of spring, with a hurrying half- 
 moon ! changing moon ! changing world I 
 poor heart of mine, more steadfast than any 
 thing it knows ! 
 
 "Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse, et Dieu 
 s' amuse." All all heart's love, heart's hate, 
 heart's delight, and heart's despair will 
 heart's desire, too? 
 
 Oh, this bitterness of giving all to one who 
 has not valued it! And yet, in spite of that, I 
 am glad glad. It is not given to many to love 
 a great man. I have seen your soul, Beloved. 
 
 44
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I must always love it; however it belies itself, 
 however it cramps and hampers itself by its lack 
 of knowledge in the struggle, however it debases \ 
 itself or hurts me, still, by some strange law, I 
 must always love it, since I have seen it. There 
 are our precious memories, not to be exchanged 
 for anything this side of heaven, and perhaps 
 not for anything on the other. "And happier 
 am I than the first spring days ' ' ; but, ah ! they 
 are never happy to those who wake and remem 
 ber in the night. 
 
 February 25th. 
 
 For all you have meant to me, Dearest, in our 
 few short days, how can I thank you? For all 
 you have opened up to me of broader views, 
 stretching my sight to farther horizons, and 
 touching them all with gold, how can I thank 
 you? If it were not for this one last memory! 
 Oh, if you would efface it if but that could be 
 destroyed how bravely I could face all the fu 
 ture, bare and terrible as it is, without you ! But 
 
 45
 
 that last memory, that "meanest day," crushes 
 and suffocates me. All the years will be scarred 
 with it. It was cruel it was cruel, and I had 
 not deserved it. "I will never fail you," you 
 had said yet how you failed me ! 
 
 I have tried to excuse and explain you to my 
 heart, championing you against my reason, but 
 I cannot. It is the knife in the wound, and, oh, 
 Beloved, was not the wound itself enough! 
 
 Some day this will seem to me utter bathos. 
 We do not vividly remember pain when we are 
 well. I have a tiny scar on my left thumb that 
 I got from a too eager movement to beg you 
 not to quarrel with me once. Your cigar burned 
 it, and I hardly felt it, while you were full of 
 commiseration for the silly little hurt. "Well, 
 there's the scar, which is blest, because you 
 cared about it, but this other, this deeper it 
 is not blessed, and I don't believe you know how 
 hard it hurts. 
 
 No more of this forever. I had to cry out my 
 46
 
 heart here, for it is the only kind of expression 
 left me now. But now I will not remember it. 
 Only you, the beauty and sweetness, the 
 strength and the weakness that I knew and 
 loved, and that knew and loved me, only these 
 I shall keep in my heart for you for always. 
 
 March 1st. 
 
 The first day of spring. Heart's Life, 
 Heart's Love, how far away you have gone! 
 Are you really in the same town, under the 
 same sky? Do you walk the same ways, and 
 leave no sign of it for me, who follow after? 
 dear God, the hunger in the beauty and the 
 uplift of the spring! "And the blossoming 
 cometh on, the burgeoning, the cruel flowering" 
 all come, but you, Beloved, who are the very 
 spirit of spring! 
 
 Later, 1 A. M. 
 
 I have been talking with one who has suffered 
 and endured, and the greatness of his heart has 
 shamed my littleness. He only showed me little 
 
 47
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 pieces of his love for another woman; but the 
 ideality of it, the unquestioning confidence, the 
 happiness without hope! And I have been 
 grumbling at the hurt, begging to be released 
 from the pain of unsatisfied desire. He this 
 gentle old man has passed that, and says that 
 love is its own reward, is greater than the parts 
 of it desire and pain and that once having 
 seen the soul of the loved one, nothing it did for 
 good or bad made any difference. Have I not 
 seen your soul, Beloved, your weary, striving, 
 failing, reaching, reviving soul? And then to 
 have doubted! My dear, my dear, though you 
 may never know, I say to your heart: " For 
 give ! ' ' Forgive me for judging. I am only in 
 the primer of this great art of loving. But I 
 will learn. Only don't take from me my ideal, 
 and I will learn step by step to love greatly, un- 
 askingly, purely. So I shall have you again, 
 Beloved, reinstated in my thoughts my own, 
 my own to keep. 
 
 48
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 March 8th. 
 
 We had our hour, but at what a cost to all the 
 other hours of a life ! Here is the spring back 
 again, and oh for the clasp and close of your 
 arms, and oh for your voice and eyes ! 
 
 I am not high, but only human. I cannot do 
 with this ' ' ideal ' ' love. I want You. Oh, I want 
 you so your kisses, your words, your looks 
 the beautiful all that is you else what is the 
 use of the spring to me? 
 
 March llth. 
 
 How little we must all seem to ourselves at 
 times as though our little pain were worth so 
 much crying over in the big abstract of things ! 
 We lose too much our sense of proportion, and 
 there is no beauty in us. 
 
 Selfishness is only our lack of sense of pro 
 portion; that is why it is so vastly ugly. 
 
 I do not think it would be so hard to die of 
 love as people to-day think ; but it would be as 
 unbrave as suicide. We must go on with the 
 
 49
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 weary dancing of our appointed measure. 
 "You look so frail don't catch cold and get 
 p-neumonia and die," said one of my friends, 
 with sweet solicitude, and "No such luck," I 
 replied. How silly it was! We should do our 
 dancing better and not show the strain. 
 
 I cannot have my Heart's Desire. Well, then, 
 I will inquire what is the next best thing to 
 ask of life the next best thing to strive 
 for. It is strange how much harder it is 
 than it was ten years ago. Youth and illusion 
 and promise were so real then. It's harder now, 
 and one backslides oftener and farther, and it 
 all seems futile, and we grow weary sooner. But 
 we mustn't, we mustn't, we mustn't! We must 
 shake off this deadly inertia of indifference, and 
 get our nerve back again, lest we dishonour 
 those who love us. 
 
 When, nightly, I come in front of your dear 
 dark eyes sad eyes they are, my Tree of 
 Knowledge they seem to inquire of me what I 
 
 50
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 have done in the day, how deserved you should 
 have loved me ? And very poor answers I bring 
 you. You seem to have dwarfed my powers for 
 a time but, oh, they would rise at your bidding, 
 would you but come and tell them what to do. 
 When I asked you what there was left to live 
 for, you said you didn't know, even you who 
 have lived so much! Dear, do you think if we 
 might have taken each other's hands in the dark, 
 do you think we might have found the light? 
 Vain ! We must walk our separate roads. 
 
 Good-night, dear Eyes; I am so very tired. 
 Forgive me for not having done any good in 
 your name, or for love of your friendship, to 
 day. I was so tired. It is just a month since 
 I woke from a dream. It is a year in my heart 
 and my heart is grey. 
 
 Good-night, dear Eyes. 
 
 March 18th. 
 
 He was right. The greatest things in char 
 acter are bigness and gentleness; bigness of 
 
 51
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 outlook, of perception, of sympathy and gen 
 tleness, and the two go hand in hand. What if 
 we had but an hour? Was there not enough in it 
 to make food for a life ? Beloved, if my life may 
 show ! But I am only a dreamer of dreams, not 
 a doer of deeds. Gentle I am but big? I am 
 only a woman without a woman's primal oppor 
 tunities destiny. The biggest thing a woman 
 may do is denied me. Will it forever be de 
 nied ? Is it in the denial of all that, that I may 
 perhaps grow bigger ? And, oh, even to be great, 
 would it be worth the loss of that magnificent 
 pride and happiness ? But I may not choose ; I 
 must accept. I am not big in anything but love 
 for you. Is it true, as some one says, that this 
 passion of sex is not the greatest happiness in 
 life? For men, perhaps, it is not; but for wom 
 en? Instinct is so strong, and intellect com 
 paratively weak in us. We are born to be some 
 man's companion and then some man's moth 
 er; and when destiny thwarts us, something is 
 
 52
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 perverted in our innermost nature. There are 
 reaches in your soul I cannot follow, Beloved, 
 yet all in mine you know. You know its use 
 less thrift, its harvestless husbandry. I know 
 no words for it so terrible a thing the pent- 
 up force that should be expended in making 
 beautiful souls and bodies, turned back wasted, 
 useless. And to feel oneself full of possibili 
 ties passionate possibilities! If I could only 
 translate the force into some other plane of our 
 marvelous, many-sided being if I could make 
 children with my brain books, poems, music! 
 How timid we are of circumstance how inade 
 quate our codes! How impossible our natural 
 instincts in their environment of circumstance 
 and code ! And this is the old woe of the world, 
 and other philosophers than I have harped on 
 it until we grow somewhat weary. Ah, how shall 
 we get the most out of life? Live it to the hilt, 
 with the hilt in God's hand? Or stifle it with 
 smothering sheets of our own manufacture? 
 
 53
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 What is the real? We are so various! What 
 is the real? Ah ! He showed me once. 
 
 March 26th. 
 
 I am going away, going to bury myself in 
 some new work, going to try to forget, going to 
 take myself by the shoulders and push myself 
 roughly into the business of the world, going to 
 stop hoping, vapouring, whining, dreaming 
 even thinking. Going to' work. But I will see 
 you once just once first. 
 
 April 1st. 
 
 Spring and meeting ! Ah, you commonplace 
 words ! How little you show the heart-lift that 
 lies behind the assurance of love and faith 
 the touch of the great things of life the great 
 joy the great pain ! To-day and to-morrow 
 so different ; to-day, that is all to-morrow, that 
 is nothing ; to-day, the oasis to-morrow 
 
 April 2d. 
 The desert. You have gone. 
 
 54
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 May 7th. 
 
 And now to forget. We may not meet nor 
 know each other 's hopes and plans and prayers. 
 I know that others will come near to say the 
 things that once I said, to uphold you with the 
 strong belief and trust that once I gave you, and 
 which you loved from me alone. Into your life 
 I may not enter, but only watch it softly from 
 afar. Yet do not quite forget me, my Beloved. 
 In your book of life turn down the page you 
 gave to me, and look back at it often. But I 
 must not look back, lest, like Lot's wife, I turn 
 into a pillar of salt the salt of crystallized 
 tears. Forward for me forward to see if I 
 may not save, or make some worthy thing to 
 rise, phoenix-like, from the wreck of all the 
 fair, sweet, frail things that were. Ah, what 
 can be as fair as those old ideals and illusions? 
 Life, you have taken them away, and given me 
 nothing in their place. Fate, in the hand you 
 withhold have you something even more worth 
 while? 
 
 55
 
 June 10th. 
 
 I am at Mrs. Chester's again, and the place is 
 full of memories. Here we kissed each other 
 for the first time only last November. I re 
 member how after the others had gone upstairs, 
 and the fire had died down, you first told me of 
 yourself, how you put your head in my lap 
 my Child! and told me of your mistakes and 
 follies. Oh, my Dear, I wish I had not come 
 back here, it is so memory-haunted! How 
 happy we were ! The dreams we dreamed, the 
 books we read, even the quarrels we quarreled, 
 and the prayers we prayed together weren't 
 they all dear to you as to me? At this very 
 table you sat shaking your head a little over 
 a wee poem I had written, there you read me 
 your play, here you wrote in "Hawthorn and 
 Lavender" for me, and gave it to me. But I 
 was going to forget, Chevalier! Ah, here I 
 named you! I must leave this place, it is too 
 full of you. I feel that even the stone of the 
 
 56
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 porch, and the bench where we sat awaiting the 
 carriage that grey wintry dawn, remembers 
 and longs for you, as I do as I do ! 
 
 June 28th. 
 
 Good-by, Dearest of All even in thought, I 
 must leave you. Out in the future where I must 
 live you only hamper me, sending your long 
 shadow over my spirit. Sun of my little day, 
 how long the shadow is you cast, ere you sink 
 out of sight. In my night which follows, there 
 shines only the pale moon of my desire, with 
 reflected light from you. Good-by, Dearest of 
 All. I lean my cheek against the chair where 
 your dear head rested, and the slow, difficult 
 tears come not the copious ones that relieve 
 and refresh the heart, after hot, midsummer 
 experiences, but slow, smarting ones, that do 
 not distort the face, but grey the hair. I must 
 lose you out of my life. Your memory cripples 
 me. You didn't want me enough. But I can't 
 
 57
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF. 
 
 lose you out of my soul to that your memory 
 gives wings ! I would not give even my sorrow 
 for any one else's joy, nor my past for any one 
 else's future. But "much is to learn, much to 
 forget ere the time be come" for what? And 
 the years are few, and I must hurry. Good-by, 
 my Beloved till 
 
 July 3d. 
 
 But the truth is tearing me is beating at the 
 bars of my brain, and will break them down if 
 I do not release it. One may sin, but one may 
 not go on sinning. My soul cries out for absolu 
 tion for the sin that it has renounced. Absolu 
 tion? From whom? From the one sinned 
 against. Ah, my husband it would break your 
 heart, your pride, your life I cannot do that! 
 What have you ever given me but the best 
 things in your power? Such care, such devo 
 tion how did I ever wander from it? I cannot 
 conceive except the intimate call of the one 
 destined voice! There was no resisting. We 
 
 58
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 both tried and because he did not care so much 
 as I did not dare so much as I we put it from 
 us very soon. It is behind me now why should 
 I confess it? 
 
 Yet the truth is tearing me. When I sleep, I 
 dream that the scarlet letter is branded on my 
 heart, and that when I go home go back to 
 my husband he will see it there and know 
 without my telling. 
 
 Oh, I am afraid afraid! Afraid I shall be 
 found wanting in the courage to confess. 
 
 July 7th. 
 
 I think the last few days have been the most 
 awful that I have lived through in even this 
 awful year! After the long struggle and inde 
 cision after tears how many ! and nights not 
 slept through at all after the weary miles of 
 walking up and down, back and forth finally 
 came decision. Yet I was so afraid that at the 
 last moment I would not have the courage to 
 
 59
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 confess, that some quibble of conscience would 
 confuse me, that I forestalled my own cowardice 
 by writing Eichard just before I left Mrs. Ches 
 ter's. "Don't expect any happiness from my 
 home-coming. There is none for us. I have 
 something so grave to tell you that it will change 
 our lives." 
 
 And all the way home in the train I wondered 
 how I should do it, and if I ought if it would 
 not be braver to live the lie out to the end to 
 take my husband's love and homage and 
 worldly goods just as if I deserved them, to 
 cheat him of a fair return of all he has invested 
 in me. ' ' The truth he knows will hurt him more 
 than the truth he doesn't know," I argued pas 
 sionately to myself. And then I remembered 
 my letter, and thanked Heaven I had put the 
 possibility of flunking behind me. 
 
 Eliza met me at the door and smiled a wel 
 come. "Mr. Trent is waiting for you in the li 
 brary, ma'am. He was too late for the train," 
 she said. 
 
 60
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Strange how trifles come back to one. I had 
 my little traveling bag in my hand, and when 
 she would have taken it from me I kept it, feel 
 ing I must have hold of something, and went 
 swiftly upstairs with it in my grasp. With a 
 great throb of the heart, I stopped for a mo 
 ment, leaning against the library door. Then I 
 turned the handle and went in. 
 
 Eichard had been standing at the window. 
 He turned with hands outstretched to me, and 
 spoke in the full, kind tones I know so well. 
 
 "Well, dear, it is good to have you'* then he 
 stopped, looking at my face, and I saw the lines 
 of his, strained and anxious, deepen into fur 
 rows of pain. 
 
 I had not taken off my hat, nor put down my 
 traveling bag. I just stood leaning against the 
 closed door, trying very hard to speak evenly, 
 but only managing to get the words out in 
 strange little jerks. I said very quietly that I 
 had not come home to stay, because I had done 
 
 61
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 . . . the forbidden thing for a wife to do. 
 I heard the silence reverberate the words 
 .. . . till they grew like a shouting in my 
 ears. . * . And still I stood and waited. 
 * . . When nothing happened, after a long 
 time, I turned blindly to go out, and then came 
 the grave, kind voice : 
 
 "Well, dear girl, you don't think I'm going 
 to desert you in the worst trouble of your life, 
 do you?" 
 
 And, God ! that broke me. 
 
 If he had struck me, choked me, killed me, but 
 to pity me to be kind after I had given him 
 such a heart-blow ! Ah, if I could have spared 
 Mm! That is what I regret now too late; not 
 the sin that was sweet; not the cost it was 
 worth it but the suffering it caused an inno 
 cent man a great, gentle heart that I'm not 
 worth. The truth is not as good as it seems. 
 And yet he had to _know. 
 
 He came to me and took the bag out of my 
 hands. 
 
 62
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Sit down," lie said quietly. "Now, tell me, 
 if you want to, about it. Who is the man?" 
 
 "Oh, no one you know," I said hurriedly, 
 evading his eyes, which were fixed on me. 
 
 "That won't do." 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 "Junia, who is the man?" 
 
 "Dick," I said desperately, getting up, faint 
 and miserable with memory, "it can't matter 
 to you who he is ; he is not in my life any more. 
 I have sent no, he has gone away. It was only 
 only " 
 
 He interrupted with: "But you care for him 
 you love him?" 
 
 I could not answer. 
 
 "Don't you see, Junia," Eichard went on, 
 ' ' that I can 't help you if you don 't trust me I I 
 must know who he is what he proposes to do 
 what you wish me to do." 
 
 "Oh, Dick, whatever you will. It is for you 
 to say. You are the wronged one. As for him, 
 
 63
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 he doesn't know; lie doesn't dream I would tell 
 you " 
 
 "Why did you tell me?" my husband asked, 
 curiously. 
 
 Suddenly I knew why with deep instinct I 
 knew. It was not from any high motive of 
 honour, as I had deceived myself into thinking, 
 but the deep sex-instinct of a woman, to keep 
 herself inviolate after the touch of the one lover. 
 Ah, that was it! Love, who have known my 
 body, and my soul, it was for that. I wanted 
 to keep that last touch of you. I could not lose 
 that. I couldn't go back. Marriage would have 
 seemed a profanation without love as love 
 seemed a sacrament without marriage. But 
 though I thought this in a second, I said very 
 low: "I couldn't belong to you both." 
 
 I felt rather than saw my husband's face 
 twist with pain. After a second he said: "And 
 you want to belong to him? ' ' 
 
 And the shame of the answer I had to give ! 
 64
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 "No, Dick, no; he doesn't care enough to 
 marry me." 
 
 I remember how Dick, who had been walking 
 up and down the floor, stopped dead. 
 
 "That cannot be," he said incredulously. 
 "You would not give yourself to a man who did 
 not love you as you must love him more than 
 anything else in the world. You are not that 
 sort of woman, Junia. You are too big too 
 fine." 
 
 I, who had also been walking up and down 
 at the end of the room, sank down wearily. 
 "No, Dick. It was a mistake on his part. He 
 got carried away. But it was only a passion 
 with him a passing passion; and with me 
 with me " 
 
 "With you it was love," Dick said for me, 
 with wonderful quietude. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "By God!" he cried suddenly, his eyes blaz 
 ing blue, "he shall marry you, or I will shoot 
 him on sight. Junia, name him!" 
 
 65
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I summoned the last ounce of my energy. 
 11 Never," I answered, standing strong and 
 straight, and facing my husband. "Never. I 
 had to get square with myself, but I have no 
 right to insist on his getting his share of the 
 blame and the trouble. I told you of my wrong 
 toward you, and am prepared to stand whatever 
 consequences there may be for myself. But I 
 cannot drag him in. He has nothing more to 
 do with me. This lies between you and me, 
 Dick." 
 
 Dick came over to me he even put his hand 
 on my shoulder as he answered : ' ' But you love 
 this man, and for that reason only for that, he 
 has to be considered. A woman like you does 
 not give love lightly; it is sought and won 
 hard and when it is won, against all the in 
 stincts of her birth and breeding, and against 
 
 all her ingrained principles God!" he 
 
 cried, his hands clenched tight, "if you did not 
 love him, Junia, I should kill him. For I know 
 who he is!" 
 
 66
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Again I had that suffocating heart-throb; 
 and then he named you and I denied you. 
 
 "It is the Comte de Toreyne," he repeated. 
 
 And again I denied it. 
 
 "You cannot deny it again," he said, curi 
 ously standing close to me, "for the third 
 time " 
 
 "I can," I answered, looking straight into his 
 eyes "for the third time and the thousandth 
 time." 
 
 He clenched his hands again. 
 
 "You are the man of the two," he said. "So 
 a man, in chivalry, lies for a woman. I never 
 heard of a woman doing it for a man before. 
 You would save him from what?" 
 
 "From the consequences of my voluntary 
 confession," I answered then stopped, ap 
 palled. I had acknowledged the name after all. 
 
 But Richard was so preoccupied and sure, 
 he didn't even notice it. He was walking up 
 and down, his hands behind him, his face drawn 
 into deep lines that I had never seen before. 
 
 67
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I was exhausted, and sank into a chair, wait 
 ing, and as I did so I felt a cold nose, followed 
 by a furry head, thrust into my hanging hand 
 and there was Thane, our Scotch collie, humbly 
 petitioning for a caress. He knew, with his 
 wonderful instinct, that something was very 
 wrong, and he had waited, with the courtesy of 
 a gentleman, while affairs of magnitude were 
 being discussed, till there came a lull, when he 
 felt that something so unimportant as a dog 
 might be noticed. And suddenly looking into 
 his great gold-brown eyes, full of devotion, and 
 seeing also the familiar room, where everything 
 spoke to me it all came over me how much I 
 had given up and for nothing. I sank down 
 on the rug, my arms about Thane, and cried 
 into his shaggy neck. They were great, wrench 
 ing, sick sobs and I couldn't stop until I 
 caught sight of Dick's face, and then 
 
 1 ' Oh, Dick, ' ' I said, ' ' let us end this. I will go 
 away and you can get your divorce. Forgive 
 me, if you can, but let me go." 
 
 68
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 " Where?" he asked gently. " Child, where 
 can you go? You are one of the women who 
 must always be looked after. You have no 
 money. What can you dot Where can you 
 
 It was true. I had nothing. Nevertheless, I 
 knew I must go, and that I must go alone. 
 
 "But do not worry," my husband went on. 
 "I will, of course, look after you, see that you 
 do not want until the divorce is got. Then I 
 shall expect to hear of your marriage." 
 
 "Oh, no," I said, appalled. 
 
 "Do you think he would dare deny me that 
 satisfaction?" blazed Richard. "However he 
 may poach and steal do you think he would 
 dare refuse to do what I dictate? Have no fear 
 for him. But you, Junia my wife that you 
 you of all women you were so far above 
 all this " his voice broke. 
 
 "Richard," I said, trying to keep my voice 
 steady, "don't blame me too much I couldn't 
 
 69
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 help the love so what does the expression of it 
 matter? Let me blame myself, but do not you. 
 Let God judge me, but do not you. I have been 
 many kinds of a fool, and a weak fool too, but 
 I have stood on my own two feet, spoken the 
 truth accepted the consequences and chosen 
 the hard path at last and I am sorry for noth 
 ing except that I am not sorry ! And this be 
 cause my love was big, is big, big enough to 
 sin for, to suffer for, to live for too big to be 
 sorry for, ever. For it I have given up every 
 thing, honour, position and your affection, 
 which I know was my very own and which was 
 dearer to me than anything else until " 
 
 "And don't you see, dear," he interrupted, 
 his poor voice shaking, "don't you see it is be 
 cause I feel your big sincerity that I am stand 
 ing by? I can't forgive not yet but I shall 
 stand by, and look after you until you marry 
 him." 
 
 "Richard, I shall never do that. How could 
 70
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 I? He doesn't want me enough for that. He 
 wants me but not marriage. It's too high a 
 price for him to pay for any woman. ' ' 
 
 "You say this you realize this and yet you 
 love him?" he cried, amazed. 
 
 "What has it to do with love?" I asked. 
 ' * That is an involuntary thing. He is of a dif 
 ferent race, a different temperament from us, 
 and looks at things differently. But I will 
 marry no man under such conditions. Neither 
 will I live with you under such conditions. 
 There is nothing for me to do but go my own 
 way alone." 
 
 "Junia," he said, after a pause, "I begin to 
 think I have never known you." 
 
 "I begin to think I have never known myself 
 till now," I answered. 
 
 There was silence between us. 
 
 "I will, of course, look after your needs," he 
 was beginning, but I stopped him. 
 
 "No, Dick, dear, I couldn't let you. I can't 
 71
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 take anything from you. I thank and bless you 
 for your great thought for me and for all the 
 
 things " I broke off again, but after a little 
 
 was able to go on. "But I have to stand by 
 myself I see quite clearly that it is the only 
 decent, honest thing for me to do. I have a 
 few hundreds in the bank and before it is gone, 
 I shall find some way and meanwhile I can 
 stay with my old friend, Polly Meredith. She 
 is alone just now and she would love to have 
 me share her little flat with her." 
 
 "And he!" said Dick. 
 
 "He is in Europe now. When he returns I 
 will write to him for my letters, and return 
 some little things and that is all. Surely, Dick, 
 surely, by doing this I can pay for both." 
 
 "Oh, go!" he cried suddenly. "Go, Junia, I 
 cannot bear it. But tell him to keep out of my 
 sight for I shall kill him if I see him. Go !" 
 
 I turned, and Thane bounded after me, 
 anxiously. 
 
 72
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Take the dog," said Richard huskily, "he 
 will make it less lonely for you." But I laid 
 my cheek against the furry one and whispered 
 in his ear and when I looked back I saw he 
 had obeyed me, and was standing at his mas 
 ter's knee looking after me with mournful 
 eyes. 
 
 July 10th 
 
 It is very lonely I've lost everything and 
 gained nothing but the ability to sleep from 
 having told the truth. I have even told Polly 
 because it didn't seem right to accept her hos 
 pitality under false pretences. How kind she 
 was how understanding how dear, making 
 me as at home in her tiny flat as if it were an 
 honour to have me. 
 
 "So it is," she said, when I said this to her. 
 "It is an honour to have you trust me so com 
 pletely. ' ' Then she amazed me. 
 
 "Somehow, Junia," she said, looking at me 
 out of her big, blue, far-seeing eyes, "somehow 
 
 73
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I always knew you would live out your tempera 
 ment it isn't an American one it is foreign, 
 deeper and different. I suppose you get it from 
 your Celtic mother." 
 
 Perhaps I do but it doesn't seem much to go 
 on with. I wish I had a head instead of a 
 heart. What shall I do what? My few hun 
 dreds already are diminishing fast. Perhaps I 
 could act. But I should hate the publicity of it 
 the whole story the divorce and the reason 
 would probably all come out. Perhaps I 
 could learn to type and help Polly in her work. 
 She suggested that, kind old dear. Oh, how 
 long ago it seems since we were girls together. 
 She is away for a few days now and I am all 
 alone in the tiny flat. I had a cold potato and 
 a crust (very dry) for supper to-night. I had 
 to laugh a little as I ate it, it was so dolefully, 
 dismally like what one reads about the way of 
 the transgressor. But, fortunately, there was a 
 glass of cheap claret left from our last dinner 
 
 74
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 together. There is always some alleviation of 
 the crusts and cold potato ! One must be eco 
 nomical when one is living on one's tiny bank 
 account. 
 
 July 18th 
 
 "I know not if the gods will overthrow me. 
 I have very sore shame, if like a coward I shrink 
 away from the battle; moreover, my own soul 
 forbiddeth me. Destiny no man hath escaped 
 when once he hath been born." 
 
 I am back in my old home ; in my girlish bed 
 room, among old school books. Did I really 
 mark those old heroic passages? Was it really 
 I? Here are the old buff-coloured walls. The 
 windows that look out on the changing tides, 
 and the blossoming linden trees and the 
 stretch of lovely green that slopes to the water's 
 edge these are all unchanged. It is so good to 
 find them so to listen again to the same old 
 sounds of wind and birds. But this is not my 
 
 75
 
 environment now. I can find no solution to my 
 problem in these peaceful things. 
 
 I had a letter from Dick which made my eyes 
 i smart and brim over. When I could see again, 
 I read: 
 
 "If I thought it any use I would say come 
 back, and let us bury this thing between us. Old 
 Dr. Time is a wonderful healer and he might 
 cure you of your fever, and me of my hurt. I 
 miss you very much so does Thane and many 
 people ask for you already. If you think best, 
 come back. In any case, count on me, as always, 
 to do whatever is best for your interests." 
 
 Oh, Richard of the fine, big nature ! You are 
 jthe unconscious background against which I set 
 all men and find them lacking. 
 
 If only I could have loved you ! Why is it we 
 love where we would not, and may not where 
 we would? 
 
 76
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 But, oh ! I want to be real, real, real ! Good 
 or bad, whichever I am, I want to be real. I 
 will go back to Polly and ask her to help me with 
 her deeper, truer insight. She was not shocked^ 
 at the real me. She understood. 
 
 I cannot crush out this love that is in my 
 heart hopeless as it is and if I went back to 
 my old life, would not it be a traitor sitting at 
 our hearth side? And all the unfulfilled desires 
 and possibilities in me, even though I gave them 
 no expression would they not undermine all 
 hope of happiness ? 
 
 Chevalier, Chevalier! You are the only an 
 swer to them. If you would but come back and 
 determine my course. Say you want me, say 
 you need me, as often before. You cannot have 
 won so great a love wholly on false pretences. 
 Yet how you deceived me ! I thought you gave 
 all to it, as I did, and when I found you would 
 risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, it was not only a 
 hurt to the heart it was an insult to the brain. 
 
 77
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 What a pitiable fool you must have thought me 
 and how I have hated myself for not being 
 able to hate you ! Yet I think you loved me 
 all you could so little ! 
 
 In some ways a mother's love and a mistress' 
 love are not so far apart not so different as 
 they would seem. Each asks so little, and gives 
 so much. A man, the Scriptures say, cannot 
 do more than "lay down his life for his friend," 
 \but a woman ah ! a woman may do more. She 
 lay lay down her love as well as her life. And 
 it is more to her than life ; or perhaps they are 
 two halves love and life; a man seldom gives 
 them both, but a woman a mother or a mis 
 tress she gives both to the man she loves. 
 
 Brain and flesh call for you. If I go on to 
 you where the ways divide I shall at least lie 
 no more be real, at last even though you put 
 my soul and body on the rack as you will do 
 well I know. Yet would not the rack I deserve 
 be better than the garden I have lost the right 
 to? 
 
 78
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 If you only really cared ! If you only needed 
 me! With ever so little to build on, I could 
 build but with nothing Ropes of sand. 
 
 September 1st. 
 
 I am back with Polly, dearest and best friend 
 of friends in this time of my great need. I am 
 trying to go on with life as if nothing had hap 
 pened trying to help Polly in her work. I 
 have learned to type which is useful. Fortu 
 nately, in these summer months I have not run 
 across our friends, and have not yet had to ex 
 plain my situation. But soon, soon I must face 
 it. 
 
 Polly and I spoke of it the other night. "Of 
 course," she said in her thoughtful way, "most 
 people would say go back to your husband and 
 count yourself lucky to still find love awaiting 
 you, for you did him a great wrong, and to take 
 you back he must give up his pride and his 
 revenge. It is a great deal that he should pre- 
 79
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 fer you to those. It would be the safe, wise 
 thing to do." 
 
 "And the untrue one," I answered, 
 i "Why untrue?" 
 
 "Because I can't feel for Dick any more as 
 I did. And it would be cheating him taking all 
 and giving nothing. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I see," dear Polly said, gently. 
 
 "And then," I went on recklessly, "I am so 
 afraid of my needs and desires. Dick doesn't 
 answer them. He never did. But they were 
 asleep until until but now they are awake, 
 Polly, and they can't be answered if I am to do 
 right. And I dare not trust myself." 
 
 "But," said Polly, "Love isn't the only thing 
 in life. I don't even think it is the best no, 
 really I don't." Her blue eyes smiled sadly 
 at me. "You see," she went on, "I've had my 
 experience so I can speak 'as one having au 
 thority, and not as the Scribes.' I, too, thought 
 it the only thing once the best thing, but it 
 
 80
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 isn't, Junia, dear. There is work the gift of 
 self-expression in whatever line you are called 
 to and there are friends real ones who 
 never fail you. These two things compensate. 
 You'll find it out yourself, dear, when the vision 
 is gone, and the dream has become a night 
 mare." 
 
 Not one of Mrs. Meredith's friends ever got 
 as much confidence as that from her. But I 
 somehow I knew there was something in her life 
 deeper than she could speak of. Yet she was a 
 splendid wife, devoted and affectionate, and I 
 don't think, up to the day of his death, that her 
 husband ever realized there was anything or 
 any one else in the world for her but him. She 
 succeeded in doing the thing I failed in doing 
 in keeping down herself, "her own needs and 
 desires" for the sake of the word she had 
 given and the contract she had undertaken to 
 keep. I knew, too, she succeeded in keeping the 
 man's friendship the other man's and that 
 
 81
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 seems to me a wonderful thing for two people 
 who should have been lovers. 
 
 September 3d. 
 
 There came two letters to me to-day which 
 took my breath away. Dick's read: 
 
 "Junia, I want you to come home, and live 
 in our house as becomes you. I shall not be 
 there. I have established a residence in another 
 State, and divorce proceedings can be begun 
 at any time. Meanwhile, it will make less talk 
 for you to come home. A man's absence can be 
 accounted for on 'business' woman's not 
 so easily. No one knows anything from me, so 
 it will not be difficult for you to resume your 
 position in my house, until you are legally free. 
 Meanwhile, feel so in all ways, and if you want 
 anything, call on me as ever. I met Toreyne 
 the other day at the club and told him I should 
 expect your marriage to follow our divorce." 
 
 82
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Then I opened the other letter which had been 
 forwarded me from my home : 
 
 DEAE JUNIA: I shall call on you to-mor 
 row, Tuesday, at five, and hope to find you at 
 home. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 "VlCTOK DE TOBEYNE." 
 
 To-morrow! why, that's to-day! I gasped 
 and pushed the two letters across the table to 
 Polly. 
 
 "You had better go, dear," she said, her face 
 very grave. 
 
 "What shall you do?" she added. 
 
 "I don't know," I answered. 
 
 But I think I do know, now that I am at home 
 again. How lonely the house is, and there are 
 still two hours to live and wait for him, whom 
 I shall never wait for again in all my life. Two 
 hours and the moment will have come. Two 
 
 83
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 hours, and youth and love are behind me for 
 ever their passion and fervour their delight 
 and despair. It is three o'clock. At five he will 
 have come. At six he will have gone, and all 
 goes with him that I once thought made life 
 worth living. Stripped of glamour, of illusion, 
 face to face, I shall see him, for a moment 
 and then no more forever. For nearly a year, 
 brain and heart and soul have belonged to him, 
 been tortured by him, loved him. Now they must 
 cast him out forever. I must forget. He has 
 lain between my breasts. He has known me 
 body and soul. I have been burnt in the flame 
 of his desire. We have dropped to our knees 
 and prayed. We have risen to our feet and 
 talked of great and little things. And now I 
 must forget since I cannot hate I must forget. 
 God help me to find the other things in life, or 
 in mercy take life itself away ! 
 
 In less than two hours it will be over the 
 Moment of the years. "Life gives us only mo- 
 
 84
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 merits, and for those moments we give our 
 lives" ah, Chevalier! 
 
 Later. 
 
 He has come and gone my heart is like ashes 
 burnt out. He came into the drawing-room 
 with his irresistible grace of manner, and held 
 out his hand, which I did not see. For a second 
 we looked each other in the eyes. Then his fell 
 slightly confused. 
 
 "Sit down," I said quietly, and sat myself. 
 "Now," I continued, "will you tell me just 
 what happened between you and my husband at 
 the club the other day?" 
 
 "He called me aside," answered the Comte, 
 looking not at me, but straight before him, * ' and 
 said I might find myself involved in divorce 
 proceedings between you and him, and that he 
 should expect our marriage to follow." 
 
 "Was that all?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Didn't you answer?" 
 85
 
 THE WOMAN HEBSELF 
 
 "Oh, yes, I was so stunned that I couldn't for 
 a moment, but then I said: * Certainly, if the 
 lady wishes.' Do you wish it, Junia?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 He looked relieved. "I thought you 
 wouldn't," he answered. "We simply got car 
 ried away you and I. But it was not serious 
 enough to make or mar a life, was it? You 
 were very sweet very generous to me. I 
 shall always owe you my devotion and thanks 
 more, my love and homage. You know that, 
 don't you?" 
 
 I didn't answer. 
 
 " Don't you?" he persisted. 
 
 "You told me all that last winter when I 
 broke off with you, ' ' I answered, with difficulty. 
 
 "And I told you then, if I remember, that I 
 would not marry any woman in this world if 
 I were free again." 
 
 "Are you free?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "I have just returned 
 86
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 from France. Our divorce is absolute. She 
 the late Comtess has the care of our 
 daughter, but I am to see the child whenever I 
 like. That was why I was so brutal to you last 
 winter why I couldn't yield to your wishes, 
 and face our affair openly because if any scan 
 dal had come up then, I should have lost all 
 rights to my daughter " 
 
 "And you preferred her?" 
 
 "She was my own and you were another 
 man's wife " 
 
 "And your mistress," I said quietly. 
 
 His face took on the tender melancholy of the 
 perpetually misunderstood man. 
 
 "Ah, Junia," he said, "you don't know what 
 it cost to give you up. You were so absolute 
 about it. We only met once, you remember, 
 and then only for an hour or two, one spring 
 day, after you broke off with me." 
 
 "I remember," I said, still very quietly, and 
 the scent of that "one spring day" rushed over 
 
 87
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 me. A poem we read our heads together, our 
 lips meeting at the close the old vertigo came 
 over me, just to think of it. I remembered how 
 he put his hand on mine and said: "With a 
 woman like you to inspire one believe in one 
 love one what might not a man do 1 " 
 
 Well, that was spring and this was autumn. 
 
 "I wonder how he discovered it?" the Comte 
 was saying when I shook off my revery. 
 
 "I told him," I answered. 
 
 He fairly leaped to his feet and looked at me 
 in astonishment. 
 
 "Why? "was all he said. 
 
 I looked at him and the silence grew between 
 
 us. I knew he was a point finer drawn than 
 
 < 
 most men with almost a woman's perceptions, 
 
 intuitions and ideals. I knew he had a heart 
 tender to all who suffered, whether animal or 
 human. But I knew, too, he had no principle to 
 measure by and so I could not tell him my 
 reason that I have cried out to these pages
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 alone. I only said quite gently: "You wouldn't 
 understand if I told you, Chevalier." And with 
 the childish transition of mind that makes him 
 so lovable, he cried, delighted: 
 
 "Ah, you call me by your name for me, once 
 more. You are no longer angry and cold and 
 distant ! ' ' And the grave question passed. 
 
 Suddenly he caught my hands and laid his 
 face in them. 
 
 "Don't be angry, dear Lady of Mine. It has 
 been such a bitter year a bitter year for me. ' ' 
 The words came half sobbing. "I have lost 
 everything wife home position property 
 child and now you." 
 
 Suddenly a thought for me did dawn upon 
 him. 
 
 "What will you do if we do not marry? 
 Will you return to your husband 1 ' ' 
 
 "Would you have me?" I asked. 
 
 "It would be best for you," he answered. 
 "For your sake to save your name and your 
 
 89
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ultimate happiness, My Dear, My Sweet, I 
 forego I give you back the love and happiness 
 you gave to me." He looked very noble, very 
 grave, very tender, as he said that, and con 
 tinued : 
 
 ' ' Only sometimes, remember and love me in 
 your thoughts for we have been much to each 
 other, Very-Dear, have we not!" 
 
 He would have taken me in his arms. But I 
 couldn't bear it, and all my control gave way. 
 
 "So much," I said, "that it has made my 
 life all different so much, that because of what 
 I gave to you, I can never give anything to any 
 other man. You can never give me back what 
 you took away all I have home, husband, 
 honour all I am myself just a woman who 
 loved you. Oh, so much that there is nothing 
 left for me but to go my way alone and keep 
 my soul and body pure, for the sake of the love 
 they held for you. Others have cared for you, 
 no doubt, and will care, but some day some 
 
 90
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 time when the ninth wave takes you and 
 breaks you then you will understand no one 
 ever loved you so much as I. ... Now, will you 
 please go T" 
 
 He looked at me for a startled second and 
 with an indescribable gesture of humility, bow 
 ing both head and shoulders, he backed out of 
 the room. 
 
 That was hours ago, and now I am sitting in 
 my own familiar room, thinking of all it has held 
 Eichard's wonted cheery call from the adjoin 
 ing room as he dressed for dinner; the privi 
 leged collie with both paws across my lap, and a 
 wagging tail, as Felice did my hair. Well, they 
 are all gone. Even the wee white kitten has 
 grown into a cat, and is banished to the kitchen. 
 I am all alone. When it comes over me how 
 alone, I cannot bear it. I try to read. I have 
 re-read bits of "Paola and Francesca," of 
 " Arthur and Guinevere.'* Poor unhappy 
 women who gave where they should not, and got 
 
 91
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 what they would not in return. But at least 
 at least their great gift was valued was 
 treasured was returned to them a thousand 
 fold by their lovers. It was not all in vain. 
 Ah, God, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it 
 the waste the shame! I have broken the 
 alabaster box and spilled the precious ointment 
 at the feet of my idol, and he has thought it 
 only water just common water. And I, who 
 walked with my head among the stars, am 
 grovelling on the ground. . . . 
 
 It is later now, and the lights are out and 
 the house is very still like a tomb. In all of 
 it there is no single thing awake but me. Am 
 I awake, I wonder, or in some hideous dream? 
 For my soul seems like a great dark room, 
 wherein a coffined thing lies. It has been buried 
 alive. It is death-tortured not at peace it is 
 my dying heart. Oh, God, 'let it die ! It cries 
 so let it die. Why should it lie awake and 
 cry . . .! 
 
 92
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 It is late, but I dare not be alone I will tele 
 phone Polly. I am afraid of myself. 
 
 Polly is away, the sleepy maid says and 
 Enid Cross has not yet got back to town. How 
 few there are when it comes to a great real need. 
 One may give to many but take from few. 
 
 After all, what does it matter, my little life 
 to any one but me? I can do what I choose 
 with it and there is nothing left to live for. I 
 have had my hour. . . . 
 
 Even my heart has stopped crying now it is 
 still and dead. I cannot carry a dead thing 
 around with me in my live young body. That, 
 too, must go. ... 
 
 ! - 
 
 How simple it is! This book, and a few let 
 ters labelled "In case of death burn without 
 reading," and the gas pipe that connects with 
 the reading lamp, at the head of my bed, dis 
 arranged and it is quite "accidental." How 
 simple ! If it would hurt any one else I would 
 
 93
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 not do it but it won't much. Richard, yes, 
 but I'm lost to Richard anyway. It will be bet 
 ter for him in the long run. And my people are 
 so far away and our lives so different they 
 will never dream or guess or know. Their 
 kind, dignified lives are so far removed from 
 the convulsions of mine. Yet I remember oh, 
 why do I remember now? when I was little, 
 long and long ago carrying such a bright face 
 to school and play, that Grandma called me 
 "Old Happy-heart." I shall never hear it 
 again. It is all over and done. 
 
 Ah, God ! God ! somehow the years slip from 
 me, and I feel like a child standing face to face 
 with You. I have not been very good I have 
 not learned my lesson and I don't want to go 
 to school any more I have failed to pass. 
 Sometimes I have thought You set us too hard 
 tasks giving us giant forces bigger than our 
 selves to fight, instead of foes of our own size. 
 Is that fair? You know best. But when You 
 
 94
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 come to judge, won't You remember I was a 
 motherless and rather lonely little girl? And 
 perhaps, too, You will remember that I "loved 
 much" only that isn't a virtue, because I 
 couldn't help it. 
 
 I would ask for pardon but I would rather 
 have just peace. 
 
 October llth. 
 
 After many days after many days I go on 
 again. "What it has cost, this decision ! All but 
 mere life itself. The deed I tried to do the 
 appalling, awful deed why was I stopped? 
 why was I saved from it? Oh, just to have 
 ended it all ! but it was not to be. 
 
 If Eichard had not come home most unex 
 pectedly, and restored me to consciousness when 
 it had all but left me if he had not, in dumb 
 misery, watched me fight back to life and endur 
 ance through the awful day that followed well, 
 I should not be in this world. If he had not 
 stood by, in his great-hearted fashion, never 
 
 95
 
 condoning, never even forgiving, but holding out 
 to me always a strong, sustaining hand, I should 
 not be established here in my own rooms, up 
 town, near my dear Polly. So, after all, I owe 
 everything to Dick even life and the means 
 of life, and that, too, is part of my punishment. 
 
 There are lives so tragic and wounds so deep 
 that they cannot be cured this side of Heaven. 
 At first we think they will kill us, and wish they 
 might then pained breath comes back slowly 
 slowly and there is the awful weakness, the 
 realization. Then, still slowly, the old wounds 
 heal over thinly, but remain ever tender, ever 
 sensitive, and none know how they bleed inter 
 nally. 
 
 Even the bird of happiness comes back but 
 with a broken wing. He will never fly again. 
 He will run a little, trill a little, but his song 
 will have a note of aching remembrance of large 
 spaces which his wing made light of when it 
 was strong and unstained and his trill will die 
 
 96
 
 away on the half tone recalling fuller songs 
 and freer feelings. He will still blink in the 
 sun, and stare in the starlight this bird of 
 happiness of ours but the broken wing, it can 
 not be mended; and the feathers he dropped, 
 they cannot be found. Yet we are glad of his 
 song. It is decent as a bandage tied over a 
 wound. And none would know, save those who 
 have known, what hurt the bandage hides. 
 
 How brave yet false a face, mere decency 
 must wear! 
 
 How hopeless it is and how bitter how un 
 bearably bitter! Oh, God! God! God! If You 
 were like our mothers, when we cried to You, 
 You would comfort us "kissing the place to 
 make it well" in Divine healing. Are You less 
 than our mothers? turning the face of a sphinx 
 to our distresses. Our 'mothers. I never knew 
 mine, but I could pray to her, instead of to You, 
 to help me in my need, to understand my sor 
 row, to teach me what to do. Oh, mother, my 
 
 97
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 mother, you died, fortunate you, when you were 
 younger than I. One can but die and who 
 minds that, who has lived! 
 
 Christmas. 
 
 Only a few days left of this strange sad year ! 
 Only a day or two. I turn back and re-read 
 and it seems to me all is said that can be said. 
 Nothing is changed in my heart. Grief sits 
 where joy was, but the heart is the same. I love 
 you I love you. 
 
 "Good will to you, Chevalier, in memory of 
 happy day last year," my telegram read. My 
 Heart, My Heart, when you kissed me there un 
 der the mistletoe, were we not happy? How did 
 we lose each other? So close you seemed. Arms 
 and eyes and lips joined us, and, oh ! the beauti 
 ful warmth and cheer of the room. You seemed 
 a gift of God to me, a proof of His grace oh, 
 if only you had cared enough ! Why did you 
 teach me to give all, knowing how little you had 
 to give me in return? 
 
 98
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I have taken your pictured face under the 
 mistletoe in this empty room and kissed it in 
 memory of the moment when you made me tell 
 you how I thought of you and I confessed "My 
 Heart's Desire." Oh, for one little crumb of 
 that rich feast to suddenly find it now now 
 in this moment of heart hunger and need! A 
 word only a little word ! I would give all the 
 passionate kisses and all the dear denials for a 
 word, now, that would tell me you still have a 
 little corner in your soul for me. It is that I 
 want. A lesser love will not content me. Give 
 me one moment of your Soul's love as I give 
 your hours and days and nights of mine as I 
 shall give you a lifetime of mine ! A moment 
 like those when we knelt together and prayed 
 I have never prayed since except for you. A 
 moment like that when you said: "I have done 
 wrong but I have not loved it. My heart was 
 pure." They pile up as I think of them. God 
 give me ease from this phantom feast of 
 memory when I am hungry ! 
 
 99
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Cold, driving storm, cold grey twilight, and 
 I am alone with my Ghost of Love. 
 
 December 26th. 
 
 To force back the pain, to shake off the in 
 ertia, to work purposefully while one must or 
 as long as one may. All around me are evi 
 dences of love and friendship, tokens, letters, 
 messages from thousands of miles away, Aus 
 tralia, England, Italy and close at hand, the di 
 vining thoughts of others very dear. Oh, I am 
 ungrateful to be so sad ; it is wrong, but I do not 
 often express it except to these pages. Here I 
 am real a rare luxury in this world of masks. 
 
 Late, late, late last night, in the driving snow, 
 I walked under your window. God knows what 
 impulse led me there God knows what I hoped 
 more than the sight of your shadow on the 
 blind. I felt like one walking in sleep and this 
 morning I have wondered if it wasn't a dream. 
 But no, it was only too madly real too really 
 
 100
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 mad, I dare say. I sometimes think : ' ( How mad 
 I am ! ' ' but then, how I love you ! It was very 
 dark and cold, but there was a light in the little 
 study I know so well, and that was all except 
 the long way home in the snow. Some day will 
 you understand? Some day will you know? 
 Some day will you care? 
 
 I hope to leave the thrall of your influence be 
 hind here in the old year. I hope to face life 
 better in the new. I am shackled and unfree 
 with the heavy chain of a great love. I am drag 
 ging the chain in the dust in great weariness. 
 I will be free free! Or if I must wear it, 
 Heart's Love, I will wear it as an ornament. 
 But that requires strength and I am ill, Dear 
 ill, and very tired. Oh, to pass out with the 
 old year! 
 
 December 28th. 
 
 Chevalier, I want to retrieve. Don't you? 
 To win back the old energy of effort, the old 
 sure hope of success. I am paralyzed with the 
 
 101
 
 shock of losing you. What has become of my 
 energies, my faculties, my ideals? Oh, to win 
 them back! Dear, a word from you would so 
 help be brave enough to say it ! No, we must 
 win each for himself. I would rather win for 
 you so much rather. But the deep, real, abid 
 ing thing, the only thing that counts Char 
 acter is won, not for our own sakes, because 
 we wish to possess the greatest thing in the 
 world not even for our loved ones, to justify 
 their faith in us but for its sake, for the sake 
 of Itself, which is the everlasting truth, behind 
 all things, and in all things. How dimly, how 
 very dimly, I begin to perceive. But, oh, my 
 God ! I must leave you I must leave you. The 
 force which is in us, a part of us, which urges 
 us sore, so sore against our wills up will have 
 no denial. How I talk to you in thought, just 
 as if you could hear. And now I must leave 
 you even in thought. Out of my life you have 
 gone, out of my heart you must go. I must let 
 
 102
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 go. My whole nature, my very soul is dragging. 
 Little I'd care if it did you any good, but it 
 doesn't. It is ineffective, powerless love. No 
 love should be that. It shames the thought of 
 baseness. So to my own soul, I promise I will 
 not to indulge the thought of you save as a re 
 ward for having done some good in your name, 
 through some thought you inspired in me. You 
 were so full of little kindnesses to little people, 
 it will not be difficult to remember and imitate. 
 And on those days which have been worth while, 
 I will look into your eyes at night and say to 
 them : ' ' This I did for you as Christians do for 
 Christ do I deserve now to suffer just a little 
 less f " In this way the suffering will count for 
 something. The love will benefit some one and 
 not be unproductive which is so great a curse. 
 But on the idle, ignoble days I will not permit 
 myself to look upon your picture, or think of 
 you at all. In this way you will not clog my 
 energies, but inspire them. There will be some 
 thing to be won anew, each day. 
 
 103
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "It has been a bitter year," you said, "a bit 
 ter year." So it has, but it has been beautiful, 
 too. "Good-bye" in life is hard to say, but 
 "good-bye" in thought God! shall I be able to 
 do it? 
 
 Here in the old year I leave my passion, fresh 
 and warm as it was yesterday twelve months 
 ago. There in the new year I meet my pur 
 pose, and perhaps it leads to more of power and 
 more of peace. But passion, and pain, and pur 
 pose, and power if it comes they all were 
 given by you my Beloved my Well Beloved. 
 
 1905. 
 
 The new year is still only two hours young, 
 so this last page belongs to the old. It is a 
 happy new year since getting your dear mes 
 sage. I had not expected it, but knew, somehow, 
 before I tore open the envelope, that the tele 
 gram was from you. "All I wish" you can 
 not know how much that means. No mere year 
 
 104
 
 THE WOMAN HEBSELF 
 
 could give it, only you could give it and even 
 you could not give all now not all I wish. We 
 are so various. No one person seems able to 
 content us moderns. In fact nothing seems to 
 satisfy us. How it will work out I don't know. 
 What a year it has been ! It seems so profit 
 less. No year ever left me so poor before in 
 every way in character in hope in purpose 
 yes, and in bank account, too. What a lot I 
 have to retrieve what debts to pay what a 
 handicap to lessen before I show my score at the 
 end of next year's game. I will play fair. And 
 yet no year ever left me so rich either, in friends, 
 in experience. These are worth all the rest. 
 No year ever held such swift sweet joy, such 
 long hard pain. Both are over in a measure, 
 since either would kill if they continued. 
 But the cause remains. 
 Women are mothers first. Other loves come 
 later. The first instinct is toward the first doll. 
 That is why they love more steadfastly than 
 
 105
 
 men yet do they? It seems to me the older I 
 grow the less I prove. The proverbs contradict 
 each other, and the wisest men disagree. It is 
 dimcult to find any fact to pin faith to. Ideas, 
 ideals, standards change. Shall we ever know 
 the meaning of life? Once I thought it was 
 Love, now I know that is only the accompani 
 ment of the song. Again, I thought it was 
 motherhood reproduction. Now I feel still 
 that it is creation the creation of something 
 better than ourselves surpassing ourselves in 
 work of any sort. These things that torture the 
 soul do yet stretch its capacity do urge it to 
 higher achievement. 
 
 What will be this new year 's record ? Oh, bet 
 ter than the old, I trust. Let us hold each other 
 high high and make ready for some moment 
 when we shall meet on another plane. 
 
 Dear ! 
 
 "If it be not to come, it will be now. If it 
 be not now yet it will come the readiness is 
 all." 
 
 106
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 ' ' The readiness. ' ' Ah, I try so hard to mean 
 these things. I say them, I pray them, I try to 
 mean them. But when I turn on the searchlight 
 of my heart's honesty, I know, whatever else I 
 say whatever else I pray the real thing the 
 thing that is between us is the passion pas 
 sionate loyalty passionate love for you, my 
 Chevalier. 
 
 Sic transit 1904. 
 
 "We shall abscond with yesterday, 
 Over the hills and far away." 
 
 107
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 January 19th. 
 
 IT is not the high water-mark of our achieve 
 ments that influences people, but the ordinary 
 level of our daily lives not the sudden stride, 
 but the sustained pace that counts. 
 
 One year ago I lost myself in your arms 
 in the wonder of love in your face above me, and 
 the fold of your arms beneath. Oh, I could shut 
 my eyes and be back in last year, dizzy with the 
 old delight and delusion ''lost myself" com 
 pletely. It was never the same again I, nor 
 life. Now I am just beginning to find myself 
 to know what I want to do, and set about doing 
 it. 
 
 "O You by whom my life is riven 
 And reft away from my control, 
 
 Count all the passionate past forgiven, 
 And love me once, once, from your soul." 
 
 108
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 If I could teach you ! If I could be worthy to 
 teach you. 
 
 Now that I know you are well, life has swung 
 back to normal again. Ah, how much of mine 
 you hold in your careless hand! Good-night. 
 I would the old dream would close my eyes and 
 the new hope open them. Last year it is a life 
 ago! 
 
 January 31st. 
 
 Well, I have seen your dear face after these 
 six weary months been in your presence 
 caught the smile from your eyes and whatever 
 hope I had that your influence was passing out 
 of my heart was dispelled by its clamourings as 
 my eyes met yours. I am going to give up the 
 hope entirely. You are my fate the biggest 
 influence in my life. I wonder if you know it? 
 I must accept it and do my best to make you, 
 proud one day of these written words, to be a\ 
 fair, sweet, big and buoyant temperament, to at 
 tain the worth-while things in art and life and to 
 say to you some time : 
 
 109
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "This is your doing your influence my 
 poor little endeavour to 'sing what you would 
 have said/ " 
 
 Chevalier, Chevalier, I would count the years 
 and work as child's play if at last I might put 
 the sum of them into your hands and know you 
 smiled upon it. What we need is not less feel 
 ing, but more more vital more strong. There 
 is nothing in the world that so urges to quick 
 accomplishment as high feeling. If I fail, I 
 shall be proved lacking in it. Oh, let me not 
 be that ! 
 
 February 1st. 
 
 Since the day when I took these little rooms 
 only four of them and came here to live by 
 myself, I have acquired a kind of sad peace that 
 is akin to happiness. I have allowed Richard 
 to divorce me for desertion, have refused his 
 support or help and have lived on my own tiny 
 capital. In that way I have saved some rem 
 nant of self-respect. Also, I have been working 
 
 110
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 very hard at my music, for since it is necessary 
 before long that I should earn my living, I have 
 thought perhaps I could do it by singing, first 
 in concert, ultimately perhaps in opera, if the 
 chance comes ; and I am feeling very thankful 
 for the good training of my youth, under one 
 good teacher, and for the real love of music 
 that developed my gift through all those years 
 of married life. This work, and my friends, 
 few but close and dear is all that is left now, 
 but the work gives me something to strive for 
 and the friends make the striving worth while. 
 
 Meanwhile, with the great body of people I 
 knew, I have simply dropped out. Living so far 
 uptown I seldom meet them (Richard is away 
 in Chicago and the West a good deal of the time 
 and I believe we are supposed to have met re 
 verses). Enid and Ted come in sometimes, and 
 Polly and one or two others of her literary set, 
 so I am not too lonely. 
 
 I have sung at two big concerts in Montreal 
 111
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 and Toronto, for which I got $50 a night. If I 
 can do that often, I can easily support myself. 
 I think I will go abroad this summer and study 
 with my old teacher, who is in London now; 
 then I can work on a bigger scale. 
 
 February 7th. 
 
 Straining as I am, toward the highest, both 
 in myself and my thought of you, groping as 
 I am for the balance of things it troubles me 
 very much that they should so contemptuously 
 throw down my ideal of you. I can find nobody 
 who believes in it but me! And yet against 
 them all, I believe in it. Against the tried and 
 found true, I believe m the tried and found 
 untrue. Against reason and fact, I believe in 
 my soul's sense which glimpsed only glimpsed 
 you far, far otherwise than as others see 
 you. Hauntingly, your personality crowds on 
 my brain as if I had lived it all, been you in 
 short had feebly fought and feebly fallen 
 
 112
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 before the forces that foredoomed my littleness 
 as they have yours. Vaguely, yet vividly, I 
 feel that you have loathed it and I insist that 
 you shall leave it! That you shall not lose an 
 other life in failure of yourself ! I must believe 
 that only what we love endures. How to help 
 you, my Beloved? since I am myself so need 
 ing of help. It would be the presumption of the 
 blind leading the blind, for me to try. God, 
 here is where finitely I fail do Thou infinitely 
 succeed! Send to him speak to him all 
 
 things good 
 
 How bitter it is ! We cannot really help each 
 other much. Each one's strength is in himself 
 yet the infinite yearning we have, one over 
 the other ! I feel a weary old soul, ages old 
 with ages yet to live and suffer ere it shall un 
 derstand. And you, who are really so much 
 older, seem only like a child whom I would drag 
 in off the streets, cleanse and comfort, and croon 
 to, till you should sleep and wake to think the 
 
 113
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 old life only a dream. Heaven, I think, will be 
 like that. We shall stretch refreshed limbs, or 
 wings, or whatever powers we move by there, 
 rub delighted eyes, and say: "Why, it wasn't 
 real, after all. Here are love and life and the 
 sun and that horrid struggle was 'only a 
 dream' thank God!" 
 
 February 15th. 
 
 The way I talk to you in these pages ! I can 
 not realize I have not actually spoken with you 
 for six months only seen you once across a 
 crowded room! Yet these intimate conversa 
 tions I hold with you in my thoughts. If they 
 could only reach you, like Lilliputian threads, 
 and bind the giant of your spirit fast in a net 
 of love and wisdom I would weave for you ! 
 
 Ah, why do I still chase this phantom of hap 
 piness ! Why do I not awake and say : * * Junia, 
 you have left your Magic Woods your En 
 chanted Forest behind. You have come out into 
 the sunlight of every-day effort the merciless 
 
 114
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 illumination of reality, where deeds count, and 
 dreams diminish. Live for the now not for 
 the next time"? I can see no chance of the re 
 turn of the old happiness yet yet these are 
 Spring days, and the hope persists, in spite of 
 reason, that we shall meet again, that our lives 
 shall mingle more than they have ever done 
 that we shall mean more to each other some 
 time. Oh, Hope, stay with me and whip my 
 energies to fever heat, that I may waste no time, 
 but be worthy of the moment when it comes ! 
 
 March 1st. 
 
 To meet you like that! just by a beautiful 
 chance! A sudden sight of you a quick out- 
 reaching of hands, mine in both of yours and 
 drawn through your arm at once before we 
 had scarcely spoken and how gold the day 
 turned a new earth! How wonderfully we 
 met, as though we had parted yesterday yet it 
 is nearly a year since we talked intimately to- 
 
 115
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 gether, except that one day, we both want to 
 forget, last September. How much change has 
 there been in your heart? As much or as lit 
 tle as in mine? Ah, I am so much more at 
 peace since seeing you. And I shall see you once 
 again, and then no more. I must not. Ah, the 
 partings of this world ! but then the meetings ! 
 and the beautiful happenings of Spring ! 
 
 March 13th. 
 
 And now, no more, Dear, for a long, long time 
 perhaps forever. Yet this parting, empty as 
 it leaves my heart, is heaven compared to our 
 last. I have told you what I have always so 
 longed to tell you, yet have never confessed even 
 to these pages how you proved my woman 
 hood to me the possibilities of it ! told it sit 
 ting at your feet, with my head against your 
 knee, and your dear hands blessing my 
 head. . . . 
 
 Ah, what if the child that we did not have, 
 116
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 which was never born to us, were yet a Eeality 
 a Soul somewhere in space with power over 
 two souls to draw them softly and surely to 
 gether again? Oh, Child, is this why you were 
 denied to us yet a while that you might less 
 finitely accomplish the culture of our souls, and 
 prepare them for your coming? "Will you come, 
 will you come, finally? But why should you 
 want to? why choose again this flesh embodi 
 ment this earth expression? To make me 
 happier? Is that the reason? Are you, then, 
 happiness? 
 
 little Soul, my Child, the overflow of my too 
 small cup of love if you would but come! 
 Come as the quintessence of our intimate selves 
 when the soft and silent things lie naked and 
 unashamed together, flesh with flesh, spirit with 
 spirit, inextricably mingled. Come with the 
 grace of old illusions, come with the glamour of 
 new ideals. Come like the moonlight with its 
 whisper of infinitude, tender and fathomless. 
 
 117
 
 Come like the sunlight, gloriously, with its 
 power on this day of things to be done, and 
 finished first. Come, Heart of my Heart, 
 Breath of his Life, to us fruition after fail 
 ure redeeming pledge of all we Meant to Be! 
 In you, only the best of ourselves should rise 
 again, for, should we ever draw near each to 
 each once more, it would be in reverence for the 
 love-soul found in the other. You would be, for 
 us, love made visible 
 
 "And what were worth 
 The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?" 
 
 Shall I ever know the colour of your eyes? 
 
 I could not say all this, as I sat there at your 
 feet. I could only let you know the little that 
 a man may know of the greatest thing in the 
 world to a woman the dream and the hope 
 that so nearly came to Be! And when it was 
 told, it was you who were at my feet, and I 
 held your head against my breast. Man, my 
 
 118
 
 child, no one understands you as I do no one 
 in the world, for I know both sides of you, that 
 which will pass, the "worser half," and that 
 which will last. 
 
 So you did love me after all? Thanks 
 heart 's thanks for that but, oh, not as I want 
 to be loved! Not for this flesh, which you feel 
 and see oh, that too of course, but that is such 
 a little part of me ! Dear, find the rest and love 
 it, too, one day even if the old sweet passion 
 for which we both hunger is crucified. The 
 thing that will rise again oh, love that in me 
 as I do in you, my Heart of all the World I 
 
 March 31st. 
 
 It is strange how this love, that was all my 
 sorrow, is turning to all my joy. And this with 
 out word or sign from him who inspires and 
 sustains it. I thought it an End, I see it now 
 a gateway a Beginning and beyond the in 
 effable ! 
 
 119
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 What does it matter, my little hurt? It un 
 locked the gateway, and I left it there, but I 
 go on over the far reaches that stretch to the 
 Edge of the World. 
 
 It is a fair country full of mystery and mean 
 ing, full of hints and whispers, full of solitude 
 and struggle but with such lights on the hori 
 zon! 
 
 And the garden I've left behind the garden 
 of youth on the other side of the gateway 
 oh, the memory is sweet as the flowers that grew 
 there ! But who would hesitate between a gar 
 den and a kingdom? Who, but a fool? Once 
 I would have done, once I would have said: 
 "No kingdom for me, my garden is good 
 enough." But once I was a fool. At least, at 
 last, I am learning not to be one now. 
 
 And only to think of the Company, the great 
 Company, who have taken me into their ranks ! 
 I don't count that's why I'm there but yet 
 I'm of them, with them. With them and of them 
 
 120
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 through understanding their language, all that 
 they say, and much more that they mean. 
 Those who write great thoughts in music, those 
 who make great dreams come true in painting, 
 those who feel in the fire of verse all those who 
 reach out and ask, all who symbolize in art and 
 life oh, these have taken me in ! I, with only 
 humble gifts, yet can understand their great 
 ness, since I came through that gateway of sor 
 row. Surely, this is a kingdom worth losing a 
 few flowers for ! Oh Eoses and Lilies of Life ! 
 Shall I ever find any more in the great, broad 
 wilderness I call my kingdom? I did not want 
 my kingdom ; I was ready to give it away. Yet 
 here it is here it must be ruled by divine 
 right. By divine insistence we may not escape 
 our sovereignty over the kingdom of ourselves. 
 How we shirk it how we rebel how we wear 
 our crowns as burdens, not as ornaments ! Yet 
 there it is every man's and every woman's 
 who has a soul to be lived in. We cannot escape 
 
 121
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 we can only delay. But ultimately, ultimately, 
 each must come into his own. 
 
 And in the Wilderness, alone, apart, I love 
 you better than in the garden where the serpent 
 was. Did Eve not love her lord more after 
 the fall, I wonder? 
 
 April 3d. 
 
 Dear little room where I have lived so much 
 where I have laughed and been glad with 
 friends of my heart where I have been sad, 
 alone with the grief of my life I am to leave 
 you and go to a far country. Looking about 
 your tiny space I find you crowded with memo 
 ries. There is the beautiful park in spring jubi 
 lance of green, now. It was grey and desolate 
 when I sat on the floor by the couch, and wept 
 out my heart's great ache, last Christmas after 
 that wandering in the snow at two in the morn 
 ing! What a vagabond I am, for a fairjy de 
 cent person ! There I made a new friend there 
 
 122
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 around the hearth I cemented the ties of old 
 ones. There again I read an eye-opening, won 
 derful book that peopled the dusk with almost 
 animate suggestion. Here I came for consola 
 tion to my Poets, as most people go to their 
 Bibles. Here ah, here you came, my Be 
 loved, and we had that wonderful talk. I am to 
 leave you, little room, and go far away. I am in 
 the sort of mood when even simple things take 
 on symbolism. This going away seems like the 
 last long journey, when we shall leave the dear 
 familiar things, lovely sounds of leaves and 
 wash of rain, blare of sunsets and the creeping 
 stillness of stars and go to a farther country. 
 Earth, how I love you! Sight and sound and 
 smell of you, especially when you wear your 
 spring face, your spring frock oh, shall I ever . 
 know him on a night like this? And some day 
 we must leave it all and they say there is "no 
 returning." But who knows? 
 If we could only carry memory over ! Let us 
 123
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 not live again unknowing let us not love again 
 unremembering, forgetting this Now, this sad, 
 deep, wonderful Now. 
 
 April 15th. 
 
 Here I am in the heart of London ready for 
 all the study I can crowd into a day, and this 
 little book is almost my only companion and 
 confidant. 
 
 If he should ever read this book how ab 
 surd, since it is always locked in my desk but 
 if he should ever happen to get hold of these 
 thoughts of mine, in or out of this book I won 
 der what he would think? Would he say de 
 risively : 
 
 "Call this a journal! I call it a flight of fan 
 cies a lot of rubbishy love-letters which never 
 were sent"? 
 
 . Or would he shake his head, as he used to do 
 over my poor little poems, and say : 
 
 "Very feminine very feminine" from a 
 height of masculine superiority so colossal that 
 
 124
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I felt dignified if he stooped as low as his shoe 
 lace to pat my head? Or would he and this I 
 like but to think say with that gentle lighting 
 up of eyes that I know so well, and love so 
 much, ' ' Grave, sweet Junia you silly old thing 
 to care so much"? 
 
 And I, probably with my head against his 
 knee, would laugh and wink away tears which 
 he would never see. 
 
 Ah well, say anything you like, Chevalier, 
 with your strong man's hand clasped over mine, 
 but don't laugh oh, don't laugh! for this was 
 not written out of a laughing heart. 
 
 Oh, I make even myself laugh ! As if anyone 
 would imagine that it was ! When love is not 
 the sweetest thing in the world, it is the saddest 
 and that is mine. 
 
 Never mind. I had it. I had my day. Some 
 little dogs never get theirs. I had mine, and it 
 was worth all the other days of all my life. 
 
 That to your credit, Monsieur, when it comes 
 125
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 to the final testifying that you made one 
 woman wholly happy, for one whole day and 
 night. 
 
 April 17th. 
 
 Dear old Herr Von Seebach! How good it 
 was to see his broad, ruddy face again, and hear 
 his "Ach, Fraulein! Do you drop from 
 Heaven? How many years is it since we met?" 
 
 "So you have not forgotten your old pupil 1 ?" 
 I asked, smiling. 
 
 "Ach, no," said the dear old man, still hold 
 ing my hand. "But you have changed ah, 
 much! You were such a little girl eight nine 
 years ago I could not teach you all I knew 
 then." 
 
 "But now you can?" I asked a little wist 
 fully. ' ' I have been working very hard. I have 
 come over here alone, for nothing else but to 
 put myself under your direction. I want to fit 
 myself for big work, mein Herr, if you think 
 lean." 
 
 126
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 He nodded. ''There was much, tempera 
 ment," he said. "Much depth. We shall see if 
 power has developed." 
 
 The vitality of those big, genial Germans! 
 The moment his fingers touched the keys of the 
 piano I felt new-charged with strength and my 
 voice poured out as I had never heard it be 
 fore, in great round notes that set the atoms of 
 wood in the chair, on which my hand rested, to 
 vibrating! The professor led me from one 
 theme to another, sometimes hardly accompany 
 ing at all and listening intently ; sometimes giv 
 ing me such a tremendous accompaniment to 
 sing against that it took all my concentration 
 and power. I sang with my mind and heart and 
 soul and body and the studio walls rang and 
 echoed with it and even seemed to vibrate with' 
 the sound, as did the wooden chair on which 
 my hand rested. And at the end my dear old 
 friend swung round impetuously and said: 
 
 "Ach, yes, you have the gift to feel, and tKe 
 127
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 organ to express it, but we must not go too fast. 
 You must build up physically. You are too 
 slight for sustained work. An artist's life is 
 one of high pressure nervously, mentally, 
 physically. Will you put yourself entirely in 
 my hands?" 
 
 I knew I could do that without fear, for if 
 Herr Von Seebach had not been a fine musician, 
 he would have been a fine physician, I be 
 lieve. Though he is over sixty he has the car 
 riage and vigour of an athlete. I explained to 
 him something of my circumstances how I had 
 enough to live on for a while, but it would be 
 necessary for me to be able to earn before long. 
 
 "But they were rich, your people," he said 
 in astonishment. 
 
 "My father's people, yes," I answered, and 
 then it was necessary to explain I had married 
 since, and was to some extent cut off from my 
 family. "I have now no near ties," I said 
 quietly. "Nothing but work. So I want you 
 
 128
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 to show me how to make the best of it, my; dear 
 old friend." 
 
 The relation of master and pupil has often 
 seemed to me rather wonderful. The people 
 who can teach us things how reverentially we 
 love them! and on the teachers' side I have 
 often fancied there must grow a kind of large 
 tenderness for the learning hearts entrusted to 
 their care. Anyway, my master's kind eyes 
 grew kinder as he answered : 
 
 "I will do my best, meine liebe and it will 
 be good. You have lived in these ten years. 
 .Well, all the better. We shall put it all into the 
 music and later, perhaps, into the Artiste." 
 
 And from this encouragement I went home to 
 my modest rooms in Kensington, with a new 
 hope singing in my heart. If what one suffers 
 and goes through in life may count for some 
 thing in art, after all it is not wasted. It is the 
 in-vainness of our agony that crushes our 
 spirit. But if it means unfoldment, develop- 
 
 129
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ment of other powers why, it develops in us 
 such a wider love for the world that it almost 
 seems worth while ! 
 
 April 20th. 
 
 To homeless people in a strange land what a 
 blessing the postman seems! This morning 
 came a letter from Polly telling me news of my 
 Chevalier : 
 
 11 It seems he has written a play," she wrote, 
 "which is to be produced next month in Lon 
 don. I met him the other day at Mrs. Chester's. 
 I 
 
 He has all the charm you described to me, gay 
 
 surface spirits and an underlying melancholy 
 that is very attractive. But well, dear, I don't 
 feel any stability in him. I shouldn't want to< 
 have to rely on him in any of life 's emergencies. 
 However, Mrs. Chester seems very fond of him. 
 She says his play is a masterpiece. I wonder if 
 it could be the one you did at her house last 
 year? She asked a good deal about you, but I 
 
 130
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 said I didn't hear very often, as you were travel 
 ling. He asked, too, and to him I said rather 
 abruptly: 'Did you know the Trents are to be 
 divorced?' And he was genuinely astonished 
 and shocked. ' I knew, at least I gathered from 
 Mrs. Trent that they were separated,' he an 
 swered, 'but divorced no, I did not know. 
 When did they decide to do that?' 'Just after 
 Mrs. Trent's illness last fall,' I answered. 'But 
 I saw her last month, ' he said, ' about six weeks 
 ago, and she did not tell me.' 'No, she wouldn't 
 be likely to,' I replied. 'But we are both her 
 friends, you and I, and I thought you ought to 
 know. Of course, don't speak of it yet to any 
 one. I only told you because you might meet 
 her in London and wonder. ' 
 
 "He seemed quite disturbed, Junia, dear. I 
 shouldn't wonder if you heard from him. I 
 hope I did right to tell him. Meanwhile, no one 
 else seems to know or guess anything of your 
 affairs." 
 
 131
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I heaved a sigh of relief at that. So it was 
 all going quietly, and we should have the di 
 vorce by the time people began to wonder if we 
 would get one. I thought gratefully of Richard 
 for the thousandth time, for the way he was 
 managing our affairs. Why can we not love 
 where we wish to love ! If I could have chosen, 
 I would have chosen to love the man to whom 
 I was married, for his splendid traits and 
 qualities, for the depth of devotion he had for 
 me. But women cannot choose. Their wild 
 hearts rule them. 
 
 I turned from her letter to the morning paper 
 and saw the announcement of his play. It is to 
 be done in a fortnight. I wonder if he will be 
 here and if I shall see him f And if my divorce 
 will make any difference to him? Of course, I 
 didn't tell him of it, that last time we talked to 
 gether in my little rooms. He might have 
 thought I expected something from him some 
 reparation for all I have lost in life and I 
 
 132
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 would die rather than he should think that 
 after he had advised me to "return to my hus 
 band." Ah, the mere memory of that scene 
 crushes me with humiliation. No wonder I tried , 
 to fly from life. When a woman's love is 
 spurned, what in God's name is there left for 
 her? 
 
 Yet there is work and the strange deep kin 
 ship with those who have suffered and who have 
 worked out their suffering in some form of art. 
 The master minds of the world, in poetry, paint 
 ing and music, seem to acknowledge my rela 
 tionship, though I am only a sort of humble 
 country cousin. My old gift of song is coming 
 back, and now that spring lies over London, 
 something of the lilt of it gets into my voice 
 and makes even exercises and scales seem gay 
 and joyous things. I had not realized, either, 
 how much of a repertoire I had, but as I re 
 cover it, I quite surprise dear Professor Von 
 Seebach. "You must have studied all these 
 
 133
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 years, Fraulein," lie says, and though I did not 
 think of it as study, I suppose I have made mine 
 all the operas I have most cared for. The pro 
 fessor never can think of me as anything but 
 "Fraulein." In vain do I remind him, laugh 
 ing, that I am a matron, staid and old. He 
 shakes his head and says: "No, I feel in you a 
 singleness. It argues well for the artiste per 
 haps not so well for the married life." 
 
 "A singleness !" If he had said "loneliness" 
 I would understand, for in all this city there is 
 no one that I know but the Herr Professor and 
 his chubby, cheerful wife; no one that I talk 
 with, but the landlady who comes up every 
 morning for my orders. I am not a person these 
 days I am only a Voice. 
 
 May 3d. 
 
 I am feeling quite excited. No sooner did the 
 professor hear that I was interested in "A 
 Soul's Progress" than he said: "Why should 
 
 134
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 we not go to-night you, the Frau and I? A 
 little dissipation will be good for yon for us 
 all. All work and no play makes us dull." So 
 we are going, and have quite good seats in the 
 stalls. Oh, will he be there? Shall I see him? 
 Will he remember? Why, after all I am quite 
 young my heart beats so to-night! 
 
 Later. 
 
 Ah, little book, what should I do without you? 
 You are the vent for my feeling, my thought 
 the safety valve. But for you, something in my 
 overcharged heart would burst, the pressure is 
 so tremendous, and the loneliness of my circum 
 stances so extreme. How little most people 
 know what loneness means ! Breaking old ties 
 is lonely. Forming new ones is lonely. But 
 standing without either is loneness itself. 
 
 Yet yet You were there to-night. I saw 
 you. I heard you. I felt you. I drank in again 
 the joy and the anguish of your personality. I 
 
 135
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 knew again its beauty, its grace, its charm. 
 They called you before the curtain for a speech, 
 and just at the end of your few nervous remarks 
 you looked down and saw me saw what you 
 [used, to call my "worshipping eyes" and you 
 faltered bowed and withdrew. So I do 
 matter to you still, I do ! I do ! And yet you 
 do not love me. Ah, I wonder why it is? 
 
 And then I became conscious of a grave, 
 kindly "Mem Liebchen," and instinctively 
 turned away from meeting the professor's eyes 
 then suddenly turned back, and let him see ! 
 And he understood, for his eyes filled at the 
 smile I gave him. What can I do but smile all 
 the rest of my life smile at my folly smile at 
 my sin smile at myself? It is a thing to smile 
 at, is it not, for a woman to be such a fool ? To 
 give up home, husband, reputation, social pres 
 tige and the soul and body of herself, for a 
 dream an emptiness a scruple I Oh, even God 
 must laugh at fools ! 
 
 136
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 If he had cared as I thought if he had 
 loved me as I had loved him as I still love him, 
 and always must ! Why does he not ? In all sim 
 plicity, I ask it, for I see that I am beautiful, and 
 still young still young that I have tempera 
 ment, passion, ideality. I can sing, I can act, I 
 can live! But I cannot win the one man that 
 I need, that I want yet yet he faltered, and 
 withdrew when he met my eyes. 
 
 I wonder 
 
 May 4th. 
 
 The notices were so peculiar this morning, 
 that I thought I would send him a line to off 
 set them, so I wrote: 
 
 ' ' MY DEAE CHEVALIEE : Just a little line to let 
 you know I saw your play's premiere last 
 night. Whatever the notices say, and however 
 the public receives it, I think you have a strong, 
 original, poetic work, and I feel more than ever 
 proud that I know both it and its author. I 
 
 137
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 did not know you were in London until you came 
 forward in response to the audience's call. It 
 seemed to me a wonderful first night. I felt the 
 spell of the play held all around me, and hope 
 it may turn out a great success for you. 
 " Always sincerely yours, 
 
 " JUNTA TRENT." 
 
 Surely that is not much to say or do for a 
 friend even if he doesn't love me! So I 
 mailed it to the theatre. 
 
 May 5th. 
 
 And in response, his man called with a note 
 for me which said simply : 
 
 "May I come and see you at five to-day? If 
 that is not convenient, please tell me when I 
 may come. Yours as ever, 
 
 "VlCTOE DE TOREYNE." 
 
 I hesitated while the man waited. After all, 
 it is over and done. Why should I bring this 
 
 138
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 troublous thing back into my life again? Yet 
 yet the loneliness ! Well, chance would de 
 cide. I was standing at the window, and a man 
 with a ladder was on the other side of the street. 
 I thought, * ' If he starts to climb with his right 
 foot, I will tell the Comte to come." 
 
 He started with his left but being a woman, 
 I said to the waiting servant : * * Please tell the 
 Comte de Toreyne that I will be pleased to re 
 ceive him this afternoon." 
 
 So again I am waiting for him whom I 
 thought I should never wait for again. My 
 Friend, my Love, are you coming back to me 
 across seas across such sorrowful memories 
 as ours across such a difference? 
 
 Later. 
 
 We had tea in front of a tiny fire in my little 
 sitting-room, and talked of ordinary things 
 things detached from ourselves. Then he 
 asked if he might not take me out to dinner. 
 
 139
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Pie called for me again at eight, and we went to 
 the Carlton. I thank Heaven I still have 
 some pretty things left a soft white lace dress, 
 beautifully modeled and the rope of pearls, 
 which was an heirloom. Every head in the 
 room turned as we came in not on my account, 
 I knew, but with curiosity and interest in the 
 rising young author, whose personality always, 
 everywhere, commands attention. 
 
 We were very gay and light-hearted in our 
 talk at dinner, and I found it good to be part 
 of the pleasure-world again not to think of a 
 serious purpose, a career not to think of a past 
 or a future, just to live in the moment. We 
 bandied words and wit, and gossiped of books 
 and plays and people like ordinary friends, and 
 laughed like children over inconsequential 
 things. 
 
 "I am glad to see the colour in your cheeks 
 again, ' ' he said after a while. * ' You have been 
 doing something you ought not to lately I 
 
 140
 
 don't know whether it is overwork or over-dis 
 sipation; but, anyway, you oughtn't to do it." 
 
 "You remind me of the mother who told the 
 nurse to 'find out what the children are doing, ( 
 and tell them to stop, ' " I laughed. 
 
 "Well, I'll be the nurse in this case," he an 
 swered. ' * Child, what are you doing ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, don't let us talk of serious things like 
 that," I said flippantly. "Let us talk of light 
 things like life, and love, and time, and art 
 just little things like those. ' ' 
 
 "They are all quite 'little things' compared 
 to why your cheeks are pale, and why you are 
 here alone," he answered gravely, with one of 
 the unexpected changes that make people love 
 him. 
 
 But I refused to discuss myself, and turned 
 the talk back to lighter things until we reached 
 home again. There, as he was helping me off 
 with my cloak, he suddenly wrapped both arms 
 round me, crushing me to him, burying his face 
 
 141
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 against rny neck and hair, and saying over and 
 over " Junia Junia Junia!" 
 
 And I knew again the still delirium of his 
 kiss. 
 
 Even now, writing long after he has gone, the 
 sweet faintness almost overcomes me, as I re 
 member. 
 
 But then, I walked a little away from him, 
 over toward the window, and laid my face 
 against the cold pane, until the newly awakened 
 tumult in my heart had subsided a little, and he 
 stood on the hearth-rug with a little smile and 
 waited. 
 
 "Well!" he said at last. 
 
 There were only a few live coals left in the 
 grate, and only candle-light in the room. I came 
 over to the fireplace and sat down on a low seat 
 there, smiling up at him rather faintly, I'm 
 afraid. 
 
 "It mustn't happen again," I said gently. 
 
 "Why not?" he demanded. "I understand 
 there is no reason now." 
 
 142
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 ' * More reason now than ever, because I know 
 now that you do not care for me as I cared for 
 you. I didn't realize that first time, when I 
 gave myself to your need. I thought it was the 
 same with us both the same big feeling, which 
 was its own excuse." 
 
 " So it was, ' ' he said. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Junia, I think you always undervalued my 
 feeling for you always misjudged its depth, its 
 sincerity. My affection for you was very 
 real." 
 
 " Affection what is that?" I answered. 
 ''Does it "balance the scales against love?" 
 
 "We are using different words for the same 
 thing, ' ' he said. * ' I will change mine. My love, 
 then, for you was is very real. I think you 
 always undervalued it. ' ' 
 
 He spoke like a hurt child, and as always, the 
 maternal in me responded. 
 
 "Forgive me, if I did," and I stretched out 
 143
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 a hand, which he took and kissed in the palm 
 before I withdrew it. "But you must remem 
 ber this 'love' of yours failed me at the first 
 test." 
 
 "Love often fails at the first test," he broke 
 in eagerly "before it has grown strong." 
 
 "And at the second and supreme test it failed, 
 too." I am afraid I was relentless in saying 
 that, but the memory of that last day and night, 
 when I went through what I thought was my last 
 agony, came over me. The long shudder which 
 that thought always brings shook me. 
 
 "Ah, Junia, it was a 'supreme test/ " he 
 cried. "You couldn't know how impossible for 
 me to answer. You didn't know my circum 
 stances. If any trouble had arisen then any 
 scandal about me the late Comtesse, in getting 
 her divorce, could have obtained also the cus 
 tody of the child; but now I have the right to 
 see her whenever I wish. She is very dear to 
 me my baby." 
 
 144
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "I know," I answered. 
 
 "And her mother was very bitter about me. 
 She would have liked to have the entire custody 
 of the child awarded her." 
 
 "Why was she so bitter?" I asked. 
 
 He threw out his hands with a hopeless ges 
 ture. 
 
 "Why is a woman ever bitter with a man?" 
 he asked. "I suppose, because he ceases to love 
 her. I couldn 't live with my wife after that. ' ' 
 
 "Not even the child could bring you to 
 gether?" 
 
 "No; she finds her enjoyment in the gay life 
 in society, and travel. There is no home 
 where she is. That does not suit me, so I de 
 serted her, and after a while she divorced me. ' ' 
 
 "Poor woman. I am sorry for her," I said. 
 
 "Good heavens, why? She has the money, 
 the position, the good name and I get all the 
 blame." 
 
 145
 
 "But she is the unhappy one," I answered. 
 "And she was an American, was she not?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you must have made her suffer. Ah, 
 Victor, I do not think you treat women very 
 well." 
 
 "With an astonishing audacity he threw him 
 self down on the hearth-rug, and laid his head 
 against my knee. 
 
 1 ' There is only one that I want to treat well 
 and she won't let me," and he looked up with 
 a smile that was a challenge. 
 
 There is a wonderful combination of the child 
 almost of the woman in this man. Just 
 when I want to be angry with him, he throws 
 himself on my mercy in such a way that I can 
 only pity and forgive him. Just when I become 
 tragic with the force of my own feeling, he 
 dissipates it with an audacious saying that 
 makes me smile. And even as I smile, and 
 think him a child, and make myself into a fel- 
 
 146
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 low playmate, his mood changes again, and he 
 reveals to me an emotional depth that even I can 
 hardly compass, and he becomes my master with 
 the sure mastery of the greater brain and the 
 larger experience. It is the richest tempera 
 ment I have ever known close to genius, and 
 with the strange delicacies and weaknesses of 
 genius a man, a woman, and a child, all in one. 
 
 I looked at him as his head rested against 
 my knee, in the brooding dream that only women 
 who can love with the passion of their whole 
 selves, and with the additional fervour of 
 mother-feeling, can understand. The splendid 
 head so strongly set on the shoulders, betoken 
 ing the brilliant, sensitive brain ; the level eyes 
 set wide apart ; the plastic, compelling mouth 
 what would be the end of this man? who should 
 attain so much in the world of art, by reason of 
 his fine endowment. 
 
 He reached for my hand, and placed it on his 
 head himself, mutely asking for the caress, and 
 
 147
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I smiled, and gave it, thinking how grey the 
 thick black hair was growing at the temples, and 
 how it made the face beneath seem more boyish 
 still. 
 
 " Junia," he said, after a silence that was like 
 music, "I think you have much to forgive. I 
 have failed you twice. I am not a man to 
 make any woman happy. She would always 
 have to forgive too much. I should not marry 
 any one. Yet I love you. You are next my 
 mother my little English mother, who gave me 
 all the best there is in me. Does that content 
 
 "It makes me very happy," I answered gen 
 tly. 
 
 "But it isn't enough?" 
 
 "No, love alone isn't enough." 
 
 "Ah," he cried, springing up, "how you 
 trifle with passion, you women! You lead a 
 man on to expect all and then you give him 
 back nothing. You like to play with love, but 
 
 148
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 you will not pay for it! It is the man who 
 pays ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' That is an original idea ! " I said, smiling at 
 his vehemence. 
 
 He stood facing me with a frown, and I looked 
 back at him, smiling coolly. Suddenly he 
 caught up his coat and hat, and turned and took 
 me in his arms before I knew it. 
 
 "Dearest," he said rapidly, "I love you and 
 want you, but until you want me as before, it 
 isn't any use my seeing you again. Good 
 bye." 
 
 And he was gone before I had caught my 
 breath. 
 
 So I have been wandering around the room 
 thinking it all over. What is it he wants of me ? 
 Bits of his words came back ' i I do not want to 
 marry anybody" "I could never make a 
 woman happy for long" "yet I love you." 
 
 Ah, Junia, Junia ! You moth- woman, haven 't 
 you felt the flame before, that you go on trying 
 
 149
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 to fly into the fire I Yet how you love him and 
 how you need him ! The companionship of his 
 brain, the impetus of his spirit, the joy, the vig 
 our, the exhilaration his whole being gives you ! 
 
 Ah me ! 
 
 I am very lonely yet, the dishonesty of eat 
 ing one man's bread and taking another man's 
 love, for this tiny capital which I am exhausting 
 so rapidly, came to me from Eichard, originally. 
 By the time our divorce is got, it will be gone 
 and I shall stand quite alone. And what is 
 there in front of me, I wonder! A very bar 
 ren stretch of years without either of them. 
 Yet I cannot give myself up again. I cannot 
 give up the home and the husband, and the faith 
 Richard had in me, and still has, for anything 
 less. That would be to undersell the great thing 
 of life marriage. I am not offered that. Ah, 
 no, I cannot accept anything else. I will write 
 and tell him so, and keep a copy of the letter 
 here. 
 
 150
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 "My owx CHEVALIEK: This is probably one 
 of the letters that are never sent 5 et here is my 
 heart for you my Love of all the World. 
 
 "You think me a cheat in love ; that I promise 
 and do not pay. You think I trifle with passion, 
 and that yours is the deeper hurt and the 
 realer love. You are wrong, Dear. Ask your 
 self what you would give up for it. * Come now, 
 be honest,' as you say then ask yourself what 
 I would give up. You know the difference in 
 the answers ; the difference between nothing and 
 everything; everything but a feeble sense of 
 right, which forbids me the dishonesty of eating 
 one man's bread and oh, don't you see I should 
 make you loathe yourself in the end? 
 
 So until you love me better, more and 
 better than yourself, we must not meet. You 
 are right there. I don't think we shall escape 
 each other in the end. We shall meet as we 
 have met before, but not until it is made honest 
 and right. We are young and love will claim its 
 
 151
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 tribute from us both yet. But, oh, this mean 
 time ! Why do we waste these great gold days, 
 these deep dream nights, when we are young? 
 These are our great years and we are letting 
 them go by empty-handed. 
 
 "Yet I have to thank you for the very greatest 
 thing in my life, my armour, my coat of mail, my 
 immunity from any lesser thing than loving you, 
 with all my flesh and blood, and all my spirit 
 and strength. I am not big, but my love is, and 
 it will claim you again. 
 
 "But not till you can see with my eyes, its 
 right. 
 
 "Don't think I undervalue you. I know your 
 gifts and appreciate them as few do. I want to 
 see you use use them and attain a high place in 
 art and life. You can, you know, for you are 
 one whom the gods love. 
 
 "If you do not want the only kind of love 
 which I dan still offer you, then this must be 
 good-bye for us. You see here am I all un- 
 
 152
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 queened before you, and you know the best and 
 the worst of me. Ah, my Chevalier, my Chev 
 alier, be very kind to me, because I love you! 
 I love you ! I love you ! 
 
 u Yours, 
 
 "I think you shall have this after all, the first 
 love-letter I have ever sent you, though not by 
 a long way the first I ever wrote you." 
 
 May 7th. 
 
 His characteristic reply has just been brought 
 to me. 
 
 DEAR: Please stay at home to-night 
 for 
 
 "Your 
 
 "CHEVALIEB." 
 
 So again I am waiting. I have thrown open 
 the window to the sweet English spring night, 
 
 153
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 and that I may the sooner hear the sound of 
 wheels. I went to the piano, and sang Tolstoi's 
 exultant spring song. 
 
 " and joy is near, 
 
 For my love is coming my love is coming 
 My love is here 
 My love is here." 
 
 And he was, for the last note ended in a kiss, 
 as he bent over me. 
 
 "How did you get in!" I asked, gravely. 
 
 "By the door," he answered, innocently. 
 
 "And the little maid let you?" I was very in 
 dignant. 
 
 "I told her Madame was expecting me." 
 
 "And what do you call this this " 
 
 "Well," he said, with his charming im 
 pudence, "since you ask me, I should call it a 
 revival of the fittest!" 
 
 I couldn't help laughing at his wit. And then 
 we talked as lovers always do, I suppose, of 
 great and little things, of his play, which is go 
 ing well now, of another in blank verse that he 
 
 154
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 has in his head, of a little book of poems shortly 
 to be issued and finally of me. 
 
 "You are free?" he asked. 
 
 " Practically; I soon shall be." 
 
 "And what are you going to do?" 
 
 "Earn my living somehow sing or act, if 
 some one will engage me." 
 
 "Perhaps I can help you," he answered, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 "It will soon be necessary for some one to," 
 I said lightly. 
 
 He flushed quickly. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, you must not let yourself need 
 anything; you must come to me. Ah, Junia, if 
 you could but see things as I do!" 
 
 "And if you could but see them as I do!" I 
 smiled. 
 
 "You do not love me," he said sadly. 
 
 I laughed straight out. "It is you who do not 
 love me!" 
 
 "I do, dearest, but I know myself. I shall 
 155
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 never make a success of marriage. But love is 
 different. Our race are the best lovers in the 
 world and the worst husbands." 
 
 "I can so imagine," I answered, with a shake 
 of the head. 
 
 "But if I had met you, long ago, my Dear, 
 my Sweet, before I made so many mistakes in 
 life " 
 
 "You would have made them just the same; 
 or other ones." 
 
 "No, you could have made anything of me." 
 
 We women, poor dears, we do love to think we 
 do men good, that is why this is a subtle way of 
 appealing to us. 
 
 So to change the subject I said, "I made you 
 a little song the other day, words and music 
 both. Shall I sing it to you?" 
 
 "Do," and the look and tone were a caress. 
 
 So I sang my simple little song : 
 
 "There are the trees 
 Leaning to the night, 
 As I lean to you. 
 
 156
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "There are the birds 
 Waiting for the light, 
 As I wait for you. 
 
 "There is the sea 
 Urging to the shore, 
 
 As I urge toward you 
 Crying 'Love more! Love more! 
 
 E'en as I do.' " 
 
 Its crescendo is very low and deep, and its 
 last line like a secret, whispered. 
 
 He came over and took my two hands in his, 
 drawing me toward him. 
 
 " Darling, don't you see, that is what we must 
 do, you and I! 'Lean together toward the 
 night' wake, like birds, together in the light, 
 because we are 'urged' by the big, sweet, natural 
 things in both of us June ! My June !" 
 
 He had me close in his arms he even hurt me 
 and I shut my eyes and loved the pain of it. I 
 tried for just a second to think of all the argu 
 ments I could use against him, when he was 
 away, but what did they avail in their grey lone 
 liness against this warm vitality and magne- 
 
 157
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 tism? I let them go, holding him off, with both 
 hands against his breast, and my eyes in his, as 
 I thought aloud: 
 
 "A man, and a woman, and a little lifetime 
 and that is all we know!" 
 
 And it seemed to me the great summer flowed 
 toward us on the wild spring tide, as we lay 
 heart on heart. 
 
 May 10th. 
 
 I said I would give up all for you, "all but 
 my feeble sense of right." Now even that is 
 gone. I resign it willingly into your hands. I 
 will think your thoughts, do your will, live your 
 life. What can you have but all of me 1 What 
 can I offer less than all myself to you? 
 
 Dear, when a woman loves a man, as I love 
 you, what hope is there for her? Is it so wrong? 
 Isn't instinct a better guide than precept? The 
 instinct that elects its own with every breath 
 and heart-beat of the body, with every thought 
 
 158
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 of the mind f Yes, yes, yes ! It is only the double 
 life that is so wrong. The awful, appalling dis 
 honesty of it! Oh, if you would but save me 
 from it, or consent to let me save myself ! What 
 will we do when it is over ? Will it be dust and 
 ashes'? Should we not rather part now in the 
 height of our sweet, strong passion, denying it 
 indulgence in little ways for shame of belittling 
 so great a thing? Mine is a passion of soul as 
 well. Yours I don't know I sometimes think 
 I have never reached your soul, and then I re 
 member how beautifully it answers when I call 
 "My Chevalier." 
 
 Oh, how can I give you up, when every need 
 in me finds fulfilment in you? 
 
 May 17th. 
 
 He has taken a tiny house from a friend who 
 is going away for the summer, and is going to 
 move in next month, he tells me. It will be 
 much easier to meet then. 
 
 159
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 Oh, I am so happy, so happy, so happy; and, 
 heavens! how I sing! And, "You grow so 
 pretty, Fraulein," said my dear old professor 
 to-day. 
 
 "Ah," I said gaily, "it's because I'm happy, 
 and " 
 
 "Ah," he answered back, mocking me, "why 
 is it that it is you are so happy?" 
 
 ' ' That would be telling ! " I said, laughing in 
 sheer delight. 
 
 He turned away, shaking his dear old head. 
 
 "It's a good world in the springtime," he 
 said softly. 
 
 And I had all I could do not to hug him for I 
 thought so, too. 
 
 May 21st. 
 
 I used to wonder how people excused these 
 things to themselves ; how they faced themselves 
 in their heart 's mirror. And now I know they 
 don't. With eyes open, seeing and understand 
 ing, they make a simple choice. We all must 
 
 160
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 take our chance of happiness. Some find it in 
 being good. I didn't. Health and hope both 
 left me during the year I tried it, and now, how 
 they are coming back to me ! Oh, how dare we , 
 be so happy? We who ought by every law 
 and we recognize this and know it to be miser 
 able, wretched, yet what happiness we have 
 found, worth all the rest of life ! I suppose we 
 shall pay sometime, somewhere; one generally 
 does, for all one gets in this world. Well, I shall 
 not grumble at the price. / shall have had its 
 worth. I started to thank God for it out of my 
 brimming heart, and then caught my breath 
 hard, and remembered I was thanking Him for a 
 sin it shook me to the roots. That one should 
 wear so splendid a thing, one's greatest posses 
 sion, one's only gem, covered with mud. My soul 
 shudders at my heart. But my heart triumphs, 
 and laughs yes, laughs and is glad in the sun 
 and in the dark, because at last Nature, great 
 sweet Mother Nature, is my friend, and Desire 
 
 161
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 conspires with me, instead of against me, and 
 I sing I, such a sinner! I sing for the very 
 joy of living ! for the joy of youth, and beauty, 
 and youth and sinning! I feel the awfulness 
 of it, too. I 'know and understand. I loathe 
 myself in my knowledge and understanding ; yet 
 even at that price, I am not sorry. I am glad; 
 glad with gladness above right or wrong, or 
 hope or fear, that just is. I know the "light 
 that never was on sea or land" I know the 
 "new Heaven and the new earth" and I had to 
 find them in this way. But, "What o' the way 
 to the end?" I have found them in you, Dear, in 
 you. 
 
 May 25th. 
 
 He is away for a few days now, with his 
 mother in the North. I wonder if some day I 
 shall meet her and tell her how I thank her for 
 giving him birth. I smile, a little sadly, to 
 think how surprised she would be to hear any 
 
 162
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 woman say that. I fancy his mother is the only 
 woman whom he has ever made happy for long. 
 
 It is a strange thing to snatch joy in the teeth 
 of Fate, like living, as the Swiss villagers do, in 
 the very shadow of the avalanche. At any mo 
 ment, Fate, or the avalanche, may fall ; one but 
 lives for what there is in the moment. 
 
 And in spite of my knowledge of the world 
 and of how these things must end, and of his 
 own nature "unstable as water, thou shalt not 
 endure" yet I am happy for now, and I can't 
 look ahead; I can only live one day, one night 
 at a time. And right or wrong, somehow I am 
 going to be happy. These last two miserable 
 years are straight against my original nature. 
 "Well, I would rather have them than all the rest. 
 I am not / any longer. I am you. That is the 
 tragedy of it with a woman. But I am going to 
 be happy. I will love him too greatly, too un- 
 askingly to mind whatever comes. I have had 
 terrible hours. They shall not strike again for 
 
 163
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 me. One exhausts one's capacity for suffering 
 at such times. 
 
 "O benefit of ill! now I find true 
 That better is by evil still made better; 
 And ruined love when it is built anew 
 Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater" 
 
 One who knew wrote that. 
 
 Ah, who would have dreamed we could have 
 built it up again so strong and fair? All my 
 soul is aching to express oh, for some outlet, 
 some outlet, through which all this great love in 
 me should escape and bless someone else ! Not 
 one only that first, last, and above all; but 
 after that, many, to bless many! There is so 
 much love in me, so much passion of life, such 
 vigour of joy, that I feel I could take the world 
 in my arms and rock it ! 
 
 My Chevalier, my preux Chevalier, you are 
 the Sun on my brown Earth! You call 
 forth such things in me ! I have many flowers 
 hidden here in my bosom little, tender seeds 
 waiting for the warmth of your touch. Ah, if 
 
 164
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 our love should ever reach the summer solstice, 
 and these things that are hidden beneath should 
 break forth, why, what a harvest to bless you ! 
 Beloved, my Well Beloved, would I could yield 
 it up all, all I have and then discover more 
 to yield it up again ! 
 
 Your kiss is on my heart, and your breath is 
 on my lips, but deeper than my heart, higher 
 than my lips, is my spirit sense that enfolds you, 
 that blesses you, all the years of my life, all 
 the eternity I can conceive. Creator ! Won 
 derworker! Awakener of my Womanhood! I 
 love you in all ways, and always I love you ! 
 
 May 29th. 
 
 Two letters came up on my breakfast tray this 
 morning. One from Victor saying he would be 
 back before the first of June to establish himself 
 in the little house which he has sub-leased from 
 a friend for the season. "It is very quaint and 
 interesting," he wrote, "and I have sent a good 
 
 165
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 many of my own things there already to make 
 it ready for you. You must think of it as 
 'ours.* I have engaged two Japanese servants, 
 so I think we shall be safe. What shall we call 
 it our Castle in Spain our 'Wish Come 
 True,' or just 'Home'? Ah, I miss you so! 
 But day after to-morrow" and there followed 
 a delicious rough sketch of two people ecstatic 
 ally wrapped in each other's arms, and under 
 neath the words : 
 
 "Journeys end " 
 
 What a boy he is! I don't think he'll ever 
 grow up. 
 
 The other letter was from dear Polly in New 
 York. 
 
 She said his play was meeting with immense 
 success over there, as she gathered it was here, 
 and that "the author was much talked of, and 
 seems to be as interesting a subject of discus- 
 
 166
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 sion as the play. Women almost invariably ad 
 mire and like him ; men are reserved about him. 
 Splendid, superior women like Mrs. Chester, 
 while she has the most intense appreciation of 
 his brilliant qualities, are not in the least de 
 ceived as to his character. 'The French and 
 English temperament quarrel in him,' she said 
 to me, 'but the French predominates. He is an 
 artist to his finger-tips, an artist in life, in 
 love, as well as in letters. He is also a connais- 
 soeur' (don't know how to spell it). So I was 
 almost sorry, June, dear, when you wrote that 
 you were seeing something of him in London. 
 Don't see too much, I beg of you. He came 
 near enough to shipwrecking your life as it was. 
 I know the fascination of such a companionship, 
 but trust to your old friend Polly, who is used 
 to dissecting men, women, and emotions, and 
 making literary copy of them. I think he is of 
 that type of genius that is close to degeneracy 
 
 one with rare gifts, but with no 
 
 167
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 power of character to use them. They will be 
 submerged by the inroads of the dissipations of 
 life. That's a long phrase, but a true one. I am 
 such a privileged person by right of our old 
 friendship that I can say these things to you. 
 You must not dissipate emotionally, Junia. You 
 must work, for I feel there is work in some line 
 for you to do. Don't you think the stage would 
 offer you as good a career as music? The road 
 to operatic goals is long and long, whereas, with 
 natural endowment like yours, you could begin 
 to earn almost at once on the stage. If you 
 come back this fall I think I can pull a few 
 strings for you, that may get you a position. 
 Of course it wouldn't be a big one to begin with, 
 but it would be a living, and a purpose to live 
 for. What do you think?" 
 
 And then I caught my breath over what fol 
 lowed. 
 
 "It seems to be tacitly understood that you 
 and Richard have separated. You know how 
 
 168
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 those things are, when people cease to entertain 
 and go about together. By the way, I heard 
 that Eichard had sailed for London last week. 
 Did you know he was coming! How are things 
 going between you and him? When do you ex 
 pect your decree?" 
 
 Eichard Trent in London ! Why, what should 
 he be doing here ? 
 
 May 31st. 
 
 Thursday came Polly's letter, and Friday 
 Victor came back; and of that Friday well, I 
 should go out of my head, I think, if it were not 
 for this book to talk things over with. Some 
 how I seem to understand things better as I 
 write of them. 
 
 The day was hot, unusually sultry, and we sat 
 on the couch by the window. He told me of his 
 visit to his mother, of her pride and joy in him, 
 of how lovely the country looks, and of the little 
 house he was to move into to-morrow. 
 
 "It is all ready," he said, happily. "And 
 169
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 there are birds and flowers and the two Japs 
 there now. I think I shall let them understand 
 that we are secretly married. Then you can 
 come and go as you like. You see, I do think of 
 you, dear." 
 
 He was tired after his long journey, and the 
 afternoon was very hot. So presently he put 
 his head in my lap, placed my hand on his hair, 
 with mute, intimate invitation, and smiled 
 dreamily. 
 
 "May I go to sleep?" 
 
 "Of course, if you like. But isn't it very un 
 comfortable?" 
 
 "No, heavenly; there's a little book in my 
 pocket if you " his voice trailed off. 
 
 Very, very gently my hand caressed the thick 
 dark hair until I saw he slept. Then I reached 
 for the "little book," settled myself comfort 
 ably against the pillows and began to read. It 
 was just a simple little book of verse called 
 "Love-Songs and Lullabies." I think the lat- 
 
 170
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ter sung themselves out of his heart for the dear 
 little daughter in France. But the Love-Songs 1 
 I wondered who could have inspired them all, 
 and then I saw the dedication : 
 
 "To her whose name is 
 'JUNE.' " 
 
 Ah, what have I ever done to deserve such 
 happiness! 
 
 I read them all over again while the man with 
 his head in my lap slept the sleep of a tired child. 
 Presently I became aware of another presence 
 in the room, and thinking it was the little maid 
 with the tea-things, looked up with a warning 
 "Hush!" 
 
 But it was not the little maid it was my hus 
 band! 
 
 "Richard!" 
 
 Low as the cry was, it waked Victor. He 
 looked up at me in bewilderment for a second, 
 then seeing my eyes fixed beyond him, followed 
 their gaze, and grasped the situation at once. 
 
 171
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 He rose instantly. I rose also, but stood silent. 
 The two men bowed ceremoniously. 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte," said Richard quietly. 
 
 "Mr. Trent." 
 
 They seemed to measure each other with their 
 eyes for an interminable space of silence. Then 
 Richard turned to me. 
 
 "I came," he said, in curious, even tones, 
 "because I was troubled about you. I had 
 heard that M. le Comte was in London, and I 
 feared" he looked from one to the other of us 
 "I feared what I find confirmed." His 
 voice was grave, yet very gentle. "I knew 
 what you were capable of giving, Junia, and I 
 knew what this man was capable of accepting. ' ' 
 He had hardened again. "So I came to save 
 you if I could. I see I am too late. ' ' 
 
 It was horrible. There was nothing to say. 
 
 Then Richard turned to the Count again: 
 
 "You knew, whatever the nominal grounds, 
 our divorce was really got on account of you!" 
 
 172
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 And Victor spoke for the first time : 
 
 "If the lady will accept my hand in marriage, 
 when she is free, I shall be deeply honoured." 
 
 I caught my breath, but could not speak. 
 
 "I think," said Eichard, with stern antago 
 nism, "we will leave 'honour' out of this ques 
 tion." 
 
 He turned to me. "Don't think I blame you, 
 Junia. I understand. "Women have not men's 
 code. But I can't let you play fast and loose 
 with your life. It was given me in trust, you 
 remember, by an old gentlewoman" his voice 
 broke. 
 
 And that summer day so long ago, and Grand 
 ma's words: "I say to you as I said to my 
 daughter's husband, 'Be good to Junia!' " 
 rushed back on me ; but though my cheeks shiv 
 ered and the tears blinded me, I could not speak. 
 
 Eichard went on after a bit : "So you must 
 marry, Junia; you owe me that much repara 
 tion, that I may feel you are safe and happy. ' ' 
 
 173
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Richard! Richard!" I found my voice at 
 last. " Don't you see I can't? Marriage under 
 such conditions would be a kind of price. I may 
 give, but I cannot sell myself." 
 
 "You shall not undersell yourself!" said 
 Richard, grimly. 
 
 Victor turned to me quietly. " There is no 
 question of that," he said, simply. "This thing 
 is not forced. I love you. I ask you to marry 
 me because of that. ' ' 
 
 Richard stood by the bookcase, his profile 
 sharp against it, inflexible as steel. 
 
 "I think," he said, "I think you know me 
 well enough, Junia, to know that when I say a 
 thing must be, it is. ' ' 
 
 "That is not the way," said Victor, quickly. 
 He came over to me and took my hand. 
 
 "June, I am asking you to be my wife, be 
 cause I love you, because I believe that you love 
 me." 
 
 They were a man's words, spoken with a 
 174
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 woman's fine sympathy, and I bowed my Lead. 
 Then together we faced Richard. 
 
 "That is settled, then," he said, in those curi 
 ous even tones, "when our decree is granted. 
 It will be some months yet; I shall expect you 
 to stand by your word. So it becomes a ques 
 tion of honour, after all." 
 
 "I have given mine away," I said, and my 
 falling hand struck a crash out of the piano keys 
 that must have jarred us all, tense and strung 
 as we were. 
 
 "Then there is nothing else to say," said 
 Richard, after a silence, "except good-bye." 
 
 My lips moved, but I do not think "good-bye" 
 came through them, before he turned and 
 walked straight out of the room. 
 
 1 shall always hear those retreating footsteps. 
 .They grew louder in my ears than anything else 
 down the passage, down the stairs, through 
 the outer door, down the steps, along the pave 
 ment, until they were lost among the other 
 hurrying thousands, walking I knew not where. 
 
 175
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 " Good-bye," I said aloud then, and fell 
 into blackness and silence. 
 
 
 
 If the big scenes of life were written down, the 
 scenes tense with feeling, hard with decision, 
 tremendous with consequence, how simply they 
 would read. I have always wondered why we 
 say the least when we feel the most. 
 
 When I revived after that period of uncon 
 sciousness I found myself safe in your arms, 
 Beloved, and your face, tender and anxious, 
 bending over me. Ah, it was I who was the 
 child then, and you were the man. I think we 
 said very little. I only remember your : 
 
 11 Thank God, I have a home to take you to !" 
 and you stayed with me that I might not think, 
 might not remember, might not brood, as women 
 do, over unalterable things. I owe you so much 
 you saved my woman's pride, by the way you 
 appealed to me ; yet, oh, I am not happy at this 
 forced thing ! I gave so freely to you, all I had, 
 
 176
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 all I was, asking nothing back in return but your 
 love and loyalty, and not all your tenderness 
 can hide from me that the gift of marriage was 
 forced from you. Therefore, it is a kind of 
 price put on my love, and I shudder away from 
 it. 
 
 Yet if it had come of your own free will, how 
 happy I should be ! 
 
 June 2d. 
 
 Foolish little "We all of us to take big Life 
 so seriously; to despair and agonize, and try 
 to escape him, unmindful of the good days that 
 may be! He is only a Bogey, this Life; say 
 boo to him, and he retreats. He needs to be bul 
 lied and used, then he respects you, then he 
 drops into your lap the good gifts of the gods. 
 
 Oh, how I prattle ! But deep behind my .heart 
 there is a silence like a temple. I walk through 
 that Soul-space sometimes, alone. Here are the 
 Hours, shrined this one a saint, that one a sin 
 ner, another a soldier again, a pilgrim, seek- 
 
 177
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ing, begging his way. Here's an angel-child of 
 an Hour, here's a torn old tramp; but each has 
 his shrine, and his little candle of memory burn 
 ing before it. And I pass through the temple 
 and bend the knee before each, and pray to them 
 to bless me dear Hours, poor Hours, sad 
 Hours, bad Hours beautiful Hours, all ! And 
 at the end of the aisle is the altar, the heart's 
 altar, and the heart's Idol, and all the Hours 
 lead to him, as prophets point to their Saviour. 
 Oh, Love! Oh, Life and Love, which are the 
 same! I lie prone in prayer before you, but 
 what I say I know not. There is no earthly 
 language for it, yet what should I know of a 
 heavenly tongue? I think some great, sweet, 
 midway Angel listens and will translate it all 
 to God, and make Him understand. It is a 
 prayer for forgiveness first, then for success, 
 to make you happy, and it is thanksgiving at the 
 end. 
 
 Your ring, with its beautiful motto, lies heav- 
 178
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ily on my finger, the pledge of the smaller one 
 that shall be ; but I shall love this best, because 
 you have worn it, because you drew it off your 
 own little finger to give it to me the winged 
 double-headed creature that seems significant of 
 your brilliant race. I shall wear it with hon 
 our, very proudly. 
 
 Ah, great Spirit of Love, walking abroad in 
 strange sad places, show me how to make thanks 
 to him, for all he is to me for* all he has done 
 for me. 
 
 Our little house our castle oh, bless it to 
 us! 
 
 June llth. 
 
 There is one day, onenight, in which we say, 
 "I have never been as happy as this in all my 
 life." I was dreaming over the piano, setting 
 bits of verse to fragments of music, when Vic 
 tor came in unannounced, and unexpectedly, his 
 face fine with tenderness. He stopped my cry 
 of delight with the seriousness of his look, and 
 
 179
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 said, * ' My Sweet, I want you to know I am mar 
 rying you for nothing but Love, because I love 
 you for no other reason. I was afraid you 
 might think, might doubt, and I said to myself, 
 'I will just go and tell her.' " 
 
 How I adore you for the sweet foolishness of 
 it, my Very Own! 
 
 You had a victoria waiting at the door and 
 we drove through the park, beautiful with June. 
 You reached for my hand and held it hard 
 against your heart, careless who should see, like 
 any " 'Any and 'Arriet," and the spell of the 
 night got into our blood, our pulses cried out 
 -with the joy of contact ; it was a Dream Heaven 
 we were young beautifully, divinely young, 
 and shy with it before each other. You sent 
 away the carriage at your own door and we 
 went in together. We can just see the park 
 from one of the windows. How sweet it looked 
 in its cool darkness, faintly moonlit ! We on the 
 couch looked out and looked back at each other, 
 
 180
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 and the great summer swept over us. But one 
 cannot write of these things. Words are to such 
 feelings like motes in the sunlight. 
 
 June 24th. 
 
 All my joy of you is mixed with pain. It is as 
 if threads of tinsel got into the weft of 
 heart's gold. The sad and unworthy in each of 
 us for such is our human life is so mixed 
 up with "the beautiful and right." 
 
 Eight years ago to-night I was a bride. If it 
 is so strange to remember, what would it be to 
 foresee? Our lives are stranger than any 
 books. No one would dare write of the things 
 we know. Eight years ago, and now it is close 
 to the end of the chapter. It is nearly over. I 
 think of the strong, sweet influence that domi 
 nated those years all the twenties but two 
 and though he may never know it, and though I 
 shall probably never again have the chance to 
 say it to him, Richard, my husband once, and my 
 
 181
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 friend always, I have to thank him him for 
 most of the best gifts of life and time ; even at 
 the last for the best and greatest my freedom, 
 and my love. 
 
 I have just been writing you dear First 
 Friend about the breaking up of our home. 
 Oh, we were not happy there, we were not 
 enough for each other ; but what a clutch on the 
 heart memory has! We were young together. 
 One cannot forget. I cannot right the wrong I 
 did you, but the right you did me in return for 
 it should comfort you. 
 
 Good-night, good-bye. It is strange to think 
 / it- is all over. Our plant has ceased to flower. 
 There is not even a withered leaf showing above 
 the ground. And there is a little song I shall 
 never sing again about a little ring I cried 
 over it, and put it away last night, and said, 
 then, as now, only good-night good-bye. 
 
 182
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 July 7th. 
 
 The intervals between writings are long, for I 
 am living too much to write, too close and deep 
 to find time for anything else. The little house 
 has come to mean "home" to me "home" in 
 the heart of London and no one in the world 
 knowing where we two are. I keep my little 
 rooms in Kensington, and my letters come there, 
 but, really, I am at the little house most of the 
 time. I go about five o'clock, and we dine to 
 gether, either there or at one of the big restau 
 rants; perhaps we go out after dinner, or per 
 haps we stay in, just by ourselves, the windows 
 open to the lovely summer night. Sometimes 
 Victor writes in his little library upstairs, and 
 I just sit by, to be appealed to when he is in the 
 throes of composition. I often have to settle 
 the momentous question of a phrase, or lend a 
 sympathetic ear to a new denouement of a much- 
 talked-over plot. Since the success of his play, 
 several actors and managers have been after 
 
 183
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 him to buy the next output of his pen, and his 
 head is full of plays and plans. Sometimes, 
 though, he throws them all aside, and I play to 
 him softly, weaving an accompaniment to his 
 own words of a lullaby or a love-song, or per 
 haps taking one of our favourites, Henley or 
 Stevenson, and setting them to music the world 
 will never hear. Just we two just we two 
 may know those things. If he tires of that, and 
 stretches out an arm from the couchtwhere he is 
 lying, saying : ' * Come and prattle to me, June, ' ' 
 I go and sit beside him and talk to him of very 
 little, ordinary things, of some ridiculous ex 
 pression of the Japs', of the canaries which I 
 am training to come out of their cages, or of our 
 future plans high, happy, air-castles! Some 
 times he makes me talk in French, and I do, halt 
 ingly and inadequately, for I cannot think in it, 
 and he, who is quite bi-lingual, laughs gaily at 
 my mistakes. Or we tell each other of our child 
 hood, his rather sad and lonely, between French 
 
 184
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 and English schools, or with parents unhappily 
 mated, a grave little English mother, and a gay, 
 profligate, lovable French father. He is a 
 strange mixture of them both, more like his 
 father, I should imagine, on the whole, but with 
 odd delicacies and reserves, and conventionali 
 ties that I trace readily to his English mother. 
 
 Ah, the days are flying swiftly, happily by. 
 Only think, last year at this time I never 
 dreamed of coming again into his life or of his 
 re-entering mine. He and his love and all the 
 depths it troubled in me, belonged to the lovely 
 land of unreality, the land that comes when you 
 close your eyes and turn away wearily from the 
 things that are ; and then came this spring, and 
 summer, when we ' ' sang the glory of the gold 
 en days. ' ' It seems now it could not have ended 
 any other way. 
 
 Yet with my decree close upon me, the decree 
 that separates me entirely from my husband, I 
 have to look back and remember the good gifts 
 
 135
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 lie has given. In that first union I was the loved, 
 in this to come I am the lover, not that in each 
 case it wasn't mutual, but the balance lies on 
 those sides. I used to go to the first with all my 
 troubles, the second will come with his to me 
 and I shall withhold mine, probably. There will 
 be no sobbing out on the lad's shoulder the 
 things that trouble me. 
 
 July 18th. 
 
 He told me once of how, when I thought he 
 was asleep, I turned and softly kissed his shoul 
 der. "It was a rhapsody of riches," he said, 
 with a little laugh, "because it was so secret, so 
 spontaneous." I am so glad I did it, I am so 
 glad for every look, or word, that has given him 
 joy. I remember it, of course, but to think he 
 felt it ! Such a soft little kiss it was, for fear 
 of awakening him, not given because he wanted 
 it, but because I needed to give it, so beautiful 
 he looked, asleep (as I thought) in the early 
 dawn twilight. Not even the birds were awake. 
 
 186
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I did not dream it would ever be seen except by 
 the rose that looks whistfully in at our bedroom 
 window. It was evening twilight of the day 
 that followed, when he told me he had not been 
 asleep, to my surprise, for he had made no 
 movement of any kind, nor lost the sweet boy- 
 look that sleep always brings to him. It seems 
 strange that this unsolicited caress is the thing 
 he has valued most for several days. 
 
 Ah, when this summer is over what a lot I 
 shall have to remember! 
 
 "Why, time was what I wanted, to turn o'er 
 Within my mind each look, get more and more 
 By heart each work, too much to learn at first." 
 
 I shall remember the most beautiful welcome 
 ever given to a woman to a hesitating, hoping, 
 fearing, loving woman your ''Home home 
 home home home," over and over your 
 ' ' Dearest Dearest home home. ' ' I think 
 
 187
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 that was all you said for a long, long time, while 
 you took me in your arms, and I said nothing at 
 all. Then you knelt, and put my hand upon your 
 head, and what we said silently only the Great 
 Third knows. The absolute surrender that fol 
 lowed, of each to each, the drifting away into 
 dreams, the waking in the early dawn with mer 
 ry hunger, the scrimmaging and cooking oh, 
 my Dear, my Love, it was the first of many 
 times. And then our quarrels so serious over 
 trivial things one in particular, when I walked 
 out of the house with hurt dignity one night 
 after dinner. I went all the way back to Ken 
 sington, in high indignation. I must confess it 
 oozed out at every step, and by the time I had 
 reached my little rooms, I had hardly any left to 
 sustain myself with. I have forgotten what it 
 was all about now, but I managed to make my 
 self believe I was a very ill-treated woman. By 
 degrees it began to occur to me that you might 
 consider yourself a very ill-treated man, but I 
 
 188
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 put the thought from me and went to bed in ob 
 stinate denial of it. But I couldn't sleep. I re 
 membered how you said once: "We shall prob 
 ably quarrel everybody does, when they are 
 fond of each other but let us never let the sun 
 set on our wrath. It's so dreadful to go to sleep 
 with it, because then you wake up with it. ' ' And 
 then I thought of the little house, and you alone, 
 without me, and no orders given for the fol 
 lowing day, and I knew just how amazed the 
 birds would be when no one set them singing in 
 the morning ; and I knew the rose in the window 
 box outside would look in and wonder and 
 and back I walked, and rang your doorbell at 
 five o'clock in the morning! And found dear 
 You still sitting up and grieving about it and 
 was forgiven, and chidden sweetly " always 
 forgiven in advance," you said, with swift gen 
 erosity. And while day broke softly over the 
 neighbouring roof, and crept down the walls of 
 the tiny closed-in court, how gently we talked 
 
 189
 
 together, and how tired we were with the strain 
 of unusual emotions, and how we went to bed at 
 last at sunrise, with hearts and minds at peace. 
 Ah, my Dear, with your moss-brown eyes and 
 your mouth that is still "all foolish curves," 
 what a child you are! I wish you could know 
 just once and yet I wouldn't have you quite 
 know, either, how much I love you ! 
 
 August 15th. 
 
 You are being very much neglected, little 
 book. I have other companionship than yours 
 now, so I see less of you than formerly, since I 
 do not need you so much. When one is living 
 happily, one does not need to express by writing. 
 But just now he is away for a few days super 
 vising rehearsals of his new play, which is to be 
 produced first in Paris; so, after a whole 
 month's silence I am driven again to you to talk 
 to. 
 
 Our summer is nearly over. We have had a 
 190
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 week of rain, and to-day there is a kind of 
 prescience of autumn in the air. 
 
 "Kender unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's" the silver of tears, for you, my 
 Cassar "and unto God the things that are 
 God's," the gold of joy. You are both Caesar 
 and God to me, Beloved, you give me both tears 
 and joy. Tears for the rifts I have learned to 
 know in the fine fabric that is your character, 
 and which I am unable to mend. Joy for the 
 other stuff of which it is woven, that makes all 
 my happiness in life. 
 
 So great a gift has come to me that I feel the 
 price will be required of me in some way. Yet 
 why should we think we must pay for all we 
 have ? One cannot pay royalty for favours, nor 
 God for gifts. "We can sell or lend to one an 
 other; we can only take from God. I take you, 
 Beloved, in reverence, knowing it will be re 
 quired of me in return to strive to make your 
 life fine! To be all things to you, the joy of 
 
 191
 
 summer in wintertime, the joy of youth in age, 
 the fruition of the harvest when it fails, all 
 things the heart of man can desire, and the 
 heart of woman can win, these I must be to you, 
 who are world, and life, and God, and man, to 
 me. 
 
 There is a baptism of the heart that is fiercer 
 than fire, and purer than water the baptism of 
 tears, which sets its seal upon one other soul 
 and says, "My own and here is Sanctuary." 
 
 Dearest, I only explore these roofs and house 
 tops of spirit when we are apart. When we are 
 together I remember they are there, but I do not 
 inhabit them. I live by the ingleside with the 
 common, daily things of life the merry incon 
 sequent happenings, and there we should live 
 in warm cheer that shall radiate to others who 
 may stray in sometimes, to share our hearth- 
 fire. 
 
 All common things we share, and all uncom 
 mon ones, too, for though I shall never pry or 
 
 192
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 even knock on a door that is closed to me, yet 
 my spirit will follow, follow yours, right up un 
 der the eaves of your imagination, nest with you 
 there, or, wing and wing, take your pace in, 
 flight. 
 
 Oh, love like this of mine has tragedy in it 
 it is so far too deep for joy. It has the ache of 
 foreboding, of a great soul-wistfulness, that 
 cannot be satisfied here. 
 
 September 10th. 
 
 To-day came the news that the decree is 
 granted. So it is all over. I have left my 
 kingdom abdicated. It is all over; and I am 
 free. I have just written the news to him. 
 
 September 12th. 
 
 "I think you are not so gay of late, mein 
 Fraulein," said the professor, with kind con 
 cern, this morning. 
 
 "You may call me Fraulein now, with pro- 
 193
 
 priety," I replied, smiling. "I have decided to 
 go back to my maiden name." 
 
 "But not for long," said the wise old man, 
 quickly. "Is it not so, my child? If I intrude 
 on a secret you shall rebuke your old teacher; 
 but I think you have let me guess, at various 
 times." 
 
 I laughed a little. ' * I was so happy, it over 
 flowed," I said. 
 
 " J'ose et je vainq," he read the motto on my 
 signet ring "yes, that is a good motto for the 
 Toreynes. They dare anything, and they al 
 ways win. But it does not always turn out to 
 be the thing they want. I knew his father well, 
 my child." 
 
 "Did you?" I cried in surprise, for he had 
 never spoken of this before. 
 
 "Yes, years ago. He was a great wit, a bon 
 viveur, the beau of his time ; and his sisters, the 
 three most beautiful women in Paris. One of 
 them, Diane but that is another story!" 
 
 194 -
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Oh, tell it me!" 
 
 "No," he answered, with a kindly shake of 
 the head, "it is not for the young and happy. 
 I hope you will find much happiness, my child. 
 So the great career is to be abandoned ? ' ' 
 
 "I have found a better thing," I answered. 
 
 "Ah, well, if you can be an artist in life, it is 
 better, perhaps, for a woman. ' ' 
 
 An artist in life; that is what I must try to 
 be for him. To make it all wonderfully worth 
 while. 
 
 September 13th. 
 
 The American mail arrived to-day, bringing 
 two letters one from my father, in reply to 
 mine breaking for the first time the news of my 
 divorce to him, and one from Polly. 
 
 "It is impossible to express," my father 
 wrote, "how your definite news grieved me. I 
 have guessed for some time that things were not 
 right between you and Eichard, but I forebore 
 
 195
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 to intrude on you with questions. I can guess 
 your reluctance to tell me the true state of af 
 fairs that made you keep silent till they were 
 practically settled. You said in your letter that 
 you expected the decree in a few days, and even 
 as I write it may have been signed. But if it 
 is not, my child, before it is too late I beg of you 
 to reconsider. What it is that has driven you 
 apart, I do not know and cannot imagine. You 
 taught us to love Eichard, and he has always 
 seemed to me a man in a thousand; no, in a 
 million. Whatever your reasons are that have 
 induced you to take this step, I shall not inquire. 
 You were brought up to consider the sacredness 
 of personal independence, and know my ideas 
 about that subject. I shall not ask for any con 
 fidence you do not choose to give me. But we 
 are old-fashioned down here in Virginia, and 
 divorce is a very grave thing to us. Life is like 
 walking through an orchard, and all the men 
 and women are the trees; and when I come to 
 
 196
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 your tree, I see a place where a limb was cut off 
 it marks the tree and mars it. ' ' 
 
 It is true, oh, my father, it marks and mars 
 the life. No other branch ever puts out from 
 the old scar; it cannot be hidden. There it 
 stays, dwarfing the tree of its entirety. I won 
 der if trees, like hearts, ache sometimes, in the 
 places where things were cut off from them! 
 
 I took up Polly's letter: 
 
 " Junia, dear," she wrote, "I had hoped to be 
 talking to you here instead of writing, this 
 month. But when you wrote of your engage 
 ment to Victor de Toreyne, of course I gave up 
 the hope. I presume it is not announced yet, 
 as your divorce is so recent? You know, with 
 out my saying, how I wish you all the happiness 
 that life can hold. May the light of love burn 
 brightly all down the future years for you both ! 
 So I must give up my hope that you would come 
 
 197
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 home this fall and let me help you to a position 
 on the stage? I have always thought you were 
 fitted for it, but since it is not to be 
 
 "And now I must tell you (for I promised to 
 do it , tho' it isn't pleasant, I'm afraid) that I 
 saw Mrs. Chester the other day. She asked 
 about you a great deal, and said that Richard 
 himself had told her about your divorce. ' Polly 
 Meredith, ' she said suddenly, ' is Junia going to 
 marry the Comte de Toreyne 1 ' ' My dear, there 
 was nothing else to do but to own up, and bind 
 her to secrecy. After all, she is one of your old 
 est friends. She said, 'I was afraid they were 
 much attracted when they were at my house ; but 
 that is two years ago nearly. I had hoped it 
 would die out, as those sudden infatuations 
 often do.* 
 
 11 'But this was more than an infatuation,' I 
 gently suggested. 
 
 " 'The Lord knows, I have sympathy with! 
 every degree of the disease,' declared the great 
 
 198
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 lady, humorously; 'good or bad, it all appeals 
 to me. I love the man myself. I love all men 
 of that type (there aren't many), but for good 
 ness' sake, tell Junia not to marry him ; or if she 
 does, to do it on the installment plan sort of 
 week-end visits. They can't be faithful, those 
 men, and when they tire of a woman as they 
 do of everything they can make more unhap- 
 piness than ordinary mortals dream of. Prom 
 ise to tell Junia that I said he would be delight 
 ful to adopt, but to marry, never. Those are my 
 congratulations !' 
 
 1 ' So I put it in, dear, since I promised. She 
 is very fond of you, is Mrs. Chester. Her 
 brusqueness is simply a sort of 'She's my 
 friend, and I'll say what I like about her' feel 
 ing. 
 
 "Some day I hope to know your Chevalier 
 better. Meantime, my greeting to him as a new 
 friend, for the sake of my love for you." 
 
 Ah, dear Polly ! 
 
 199
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 September 14th. 
 
 We have had an unusual week cold and wet 
 and dismal. It is twilight, and I am sitting in 
 front of a little fire which is grateful in such 
 dreary weather, thinking, planning, of all I shall 
 do when this little house is really mine. And a 
 dream comes to me of accomplished desire; a 
 desire completed in expression as a sculptor's 
 ideal is embodied in marble: 
 
 Marriage how deep it goes ! 
 
 Another man might give me a son, but no 
 other man could give me my son as I see him 
 given by you. Long before he comes to me, I 
 seem to have made acquaintance with his soul. 
 It is a soul that honours ours by coming to us, 
 that sets its seal upon our imperfect love and 
 hallows its heart-break. Yet do not fear that 
 though he came to me, I should love him best, 
 for he is higher and finer than either you or I, 
 and there is a kind of loneliness in loving him. 
 But though he is higher and finer than we, still, 
 
 200
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 lie would be little long and long, and would need 
 us to teach and guide. And we would teach him 
 true. "Where we failed, he should succeed. He 
 should be to us 
 
 "The type and sign 
 
 Of hours that smiled and shone, 
 And now are gone, 
 Like old-world wine." 
 
 It is only a dream, only a hope, but so real 
 to me. I feel he lives somewhat in space a 
 little soul drifting toward me for mothering. Ah, 
 if the day ever comes when, after long 
 labour and anguish that is rapture, and rapture 
 that is anguish, I lay him in your arms, I shall 
 whisper : 
 
 "You are no longer the "Well Beloved for 
 this is he. But you you have progressed you 
 are now the Best Beloved." 
 
 I have never called you that. I am saving it 
 for that moment; for, until it comes, there is 
 nothing to compare you with. I will say : 
 
 "0, Best Beloved, I lay our Well Beloved in 
 201
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 your arms to show you how I've borne your 
 image in my brain and body, till a part of your 
 soul was born from me. He is greater than 
 either you or I, but he will be little long, long 
 lovely years when he will need us. He will be a 
 poet, and a fighter, and many other things. Out 
 of great love he will be granted." 
 
 September 25th. 
 How terrible letters can be ! 
 To-day came Victor's reply to my letter: 
 
 "Your news," his words ran, "came to me as 
 a shock. I had not thought you would be free 
 so soon. It is too late now, of course, but if I 
 could have advised you in the beginning, I would 
 have asked you to get the divorce, instead of al 
 lowing your husband to divorce you. That will, 
 if known, always stand in your way, and prevent 
 you, even as my wife, from being received in 
 many places that would otherwise be open to 
 
 202
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 us. However, that is a comparatively small 
 thing. The thing that matters most to me is the 
 custody of my daughter. She is with me now, 
 in charge of her nurse at the hotel. You would 
 love her, Junia, little Diane. But if her guard 
 ians ever discover the truth about us, as they 
 will, I fear she would never be allowed to visit 
 us, and I should lose her. However, even at 
 that price, I stand by my word to you, of course. 
 "When do you wish it to be?" 
 
 There followed a description of how his play 
 was going and talk of other things that did not 
 matter. But I read over again that bit, and 
 something big in me rose and resented it. We 
 look at things so differently. Why, I wished 
 to take the blame, since mine it really was in the 
 first place mine and his. "A chain is no 
 stronger than its weakest link" I was the 
 weakest link in our marriage chain, therefore I 
 ought to pay and not begrudge the price. I sup- 
 
 203
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 pose he would say this was very quixotic of me, 
 that a woman cannot afford to pay, and a man 
 can. But I do not hold that men and women 
 should be so different. Each should play fair, 
 or be willing to pay the cost of all the experi 
 ence, the sin, the joy that they have. If they 
 are not willing whole-heartedly 
 
 Quite suddenly I saw what I must do ; but the 
 sight appalled me. I said, ' ' Oh, no, ' ' to myself. 
 I tried to reason away from it, but knew I must 
 do it all the time. I must give him up. My 
 heart cried out, 1 1 1 cannot ! I cannot ! ' ' 
 
 I went to the little house, where everything 
 beckoned and spoke to me, where his personal 
 ity is expressed in every way. I wandered all 
 over its tiny space, fighting the conviction that 
 (kept forcing itself on me out of my inner con 
 sciousness. I couldn't quite acknowledge it, yet 
 I knew I was saying good-bye. Each low door 
 way, as I entered, told me precious secrets, in 
 communicable things, that only the familiar 
 
 204
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 household gods may know. slanting walls 
 and low uneven ceilings, and deep fireplaces that 
 we dreamed in front of, or slept in front of, 
 wrapped in each other's arms ! collie dog, who 
 lives over the street, how I've watched your 
 grave and decorous behaviour with your annoy 
 ing neighbour, the insolent cat! rose-strewn 
 curtains of chintz in our bedroom, that I made 
 with my own hands! O couch, by the lattice 
 window, upstairs in the little library, where we 
 sat in the summer dusk, watching the shadows 
 creep down the closed-in court and the moon 
 turn the world to silver! books we read, 
 and piano we sang to! house, little house 
 of ours I am looking at you all for the last 
 time. I shall never see you again. Never again. 
 This is good-bye. For all the gracious, happy 
 hours you've held for the memory even 
 your walls are thrilling still ! But they are the 
 tomb of my heart. I leave it here. 
 
 205
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 September 16th. 
 
 Back in my little rooms in Kensington. 
 I wrote him to Paris : 
 
 ' ' MY DEAE VICTOE : Yesterday I had your let 
 ter, and it made me realize it would be madness 
 for us to pursue our plans of marriage. What 
 ever I did, however I should try, I couldn't 
 make it seem worth while to you. You would 
 always look on it as a sacrifice, and that I could 
 not bear. Neither could I bear to matter less 
 to you than your little daughter. Don't think 
 this small of me. I am not jealous of her. I 
 know full well myself how beautiful a father's 
 love may be; but I couldn't bear to be second 
 even to that. You say you will 'standby' 
 your word to me, even at the price of losing her. 
 I cannot exact so great a price of you. I give 
 you back your word, set you free quite free 
 as before you ever loved me. 
 
 "You remember I told you in the first place 
 206
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 and I repeat it now I will not marry you for 
 your chivalry or to restore my name and po 
 sition, nor for any poorer thing than love 
 the kind of love I gave you freely without re 
 gard to consequences. You cannot say it was 
 little or selfish, can you, since it has cost me all 
 I had in life? 
 
 ' ' But I have been glad to pay for my happi 
 ness with you ; it made it seem more real, more 
 deep, more lasting. And now, if it is right for 
 me to pay for both, I will even do that. 
 
 "I am going back to America home. Don't 
 follow me. Let me go. Do you remember the 
 letter in 'Les Demi Vierges,' which we read to 
 gether? Like him, I could say: 'Je ne te de- 
 mande pas de m'aimer . . . je sais que tu 
 ne m'aimes plus. Je te supplie seulement de 
 ne pas effacer de ta memoir e f que tu m'as aime. 
 Malgre mon agonie maintenant, je sais bien que 
 j'aurai eu la vie plus belle, plus enviable. Rien 
 n'effacera cela . . . et tu as connu I' amour 
 par moil Rien n'effacera cela! 9 
 
 207
 
 "Nothing can take it away, the knowledge of 
 how you loved me once. But my love for you 
 is made of mighty things that shall endure. 
 
 "Yet I must go ; there is no other way to leave 
 you free in honour. 
 
 "Je t'aime je t'aime je t'aime tonjours. 
 Adieu. JUNIA." 
 
 The first letter got so tear-stained that I was 
 obliged to make another copy, so I kept the first 
 here in this little book, which holds the rest. 
 
 And all day I have packed. Luckily, I have 
 been able to get passage for day after to-mor 
 row. I have had no time to think have not 
 dared but now 
 
 Now all is ready for the journey. The lug 
 gage has gone, all but the cabin stuff. This 
 is my last night in England. 
 
 And so the old burden is back again. After 
 all, I should almost miss it if it were not so. 
 I have gravely sinned. I must greatly suffer. 
 
 208
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 And I do I do. My heart is crying on the 
 threshold of a shut door. I have seen actually 
 seen happiness within my reach. Now the 
 door shuts on it, leaving me outside, just where 
 I was before, only I have had "the vision and 
 the dream. ' ' But I have not deserved it. It 
 was all wrong from the first. All my misery is 
 because of the happiness I saw and tried to 
 steal. I have been a thief breaking into Heaven, 
 but the gifts of the gods are not captured that 
 way. 
 
 So I am outside still. 
 
 Oh, I don 't complain. I must not. I have had 
 what makes life worth while, glorious. But we 
 pay for such glory with all the rest of our days. 
 And they who have the power of temperament, 
 "the sorrowful, great gift," often would ex 
 change it for any of the other gifts of life, of 
 just common happiness. 
 
 I try to realize it ; try to realize we shall not 
 live our lives together; that I shall not meet 
 
 209
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 your people, nor you mine; that I shall not be 
 able to tell your mother that I love her for giv 
 ing you to the world ; that I shall not know again 
 the long intimate delight of you ; nor have your 
 kisses, nor feel you lie between my breasts. Hap 
 piness has touched us with its mighty wings, 
 but you have made me afraid to trust to them. 
 So I must go away to my separate struggle, to 
 the old purpose of work and attainment, which 
 even when blessed with success fill so little a 
 part of a woman's life. 
 
 Yet it is you who should be pitied of us two. 
 You have nothing left of our great moments; 
 but I still love you which is all. 
 
 September 17th. 
 
 I went to say good-bye to my dear old friend 
 Herr Von Seebach this morning. He was quite 
 broken up at the thought of losing me, and it 
 touched me deeply. 
 
 "But you will be coming back soon?" he said. 
 210
 
 And out of my burdened heart I answered : 
 
 "No, dear mein Herr, all my plans have 
 changed ... I shall still be 'Fraulein,' " 
 and I tried to smile. 
 
 1 'You are not to marry him?" 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 The expression of relief that came over his 
 face astonished me. 
 
 "I am very glad," he said. "I know the race. 
 Ah, forgive me, Fraulein, but it is better so. 
 You do not think so now, but one day you will. 
 The heart will change." 
 
 "No, dear Maestro." 
 
 "But yes, my child; 'tout passe/ you know; 
 your dream my dream all passes every 
 thing." 
 
 "Everything?" 
 
 "Everything but work and friendship," and 
 he took my hands and pressed them. "But 
 friendship that remains. And now," he went 
 on after a minute, "I can speak to you of some- 
 
 211
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 thing else something I have long wished to 
 tell you something I have long had in my mind 
 for you in fact, since the first day I heard you 
 sing last summer. Sit down, my child." 
 
 I obeyed, wondering and impressed by the 
 eagerness in his tone. He smiled at me genially. 
 
 "I have been on the point of telling you about 
 this many times," he said, "but though your 
 voice developed week by week, and your 
 dramatic power increased, I saw, watching you, 
 as only a teacher can, that it was not I nor 
 music that was responsible for this growth, but 
 your own nature expanding, your own heart 
 working. Later, when you let me guess the se 
 cret and the cause of it, I was sorry. I feared 
 for you. Fraulein Junia, ' ' his kind hand rested 
 on my shoulder, "I am speaking now to you as 
 a very old friend, one who knew you when you 
 were quite a little girl with your own people 
 at home one who trained the first crude qual 
 ity of voice into well, something more than 
 
 212
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 that," he smiled with his habitual reserve of 
 compliment. "You will therefore give me the 
 privilege of an old friend to speak quite frankly 
 like a father?" 
 
 I couldn't answer in words, for my throat 
 ached with restrained tears, but I leaned my 
 cheek against the hand on my shoulder, and 
 after a moment he continued : 
 
 "Many things go to the making of an artist. 
 The talent that is born with him, the training of 
 that talent, are only parts. One must live 
 deeply; one must suffer sincerely; often one 
 must even sin ! Yes, my child, for how can any 
 one represent these things unless he knows 
 them? The second-hand sentiment is mediocre. 
 Many souls are like unthwarted little waves that 
 break smoothly on their appointed shore. These 
 bring us no message from the great Main of 
 Life of which they are, nevertheless, a part no 
 hint of its depth, its power! It is the great 
 surges with heads turned white with lashings 
 
 213
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 from the wind, with bosoms terrible with break 
 ing force, with mighty movement resistless to 
 the main sky, sea, storm it is these that 
 change our coast lines, trample our embank 
 ments, wear away our rocks. So it is with those 
 driven, harassed, mighty souls who bring us 
 messages from the depths of life, and the stress 
 of whose coming fills our minds with awe and 
 our hearts with sense of the mystery and mas 
 tery of God." 
 
 I had risen, and listened with held breath. His 
 words had poured out like a crash of invigora 
 ting music. 
 
 "Maestro, you are saying wonderful things !" 
 "I get carried away," he answered, "when 
 I think of what it means to create anything, 
 what deep experience of life, what power, what 
 sincerity! Whether life is moulding and crea 
 ting, cutting and hammering into shape a great 
 artist, or whether that artist in turn is re-crea 
 ting life in some form, is it not a great, a fine, 
 
 214
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 a worth-while thing, to have lived and suffered 
 for?" 
 
 I caught my breath again, for a prescience of 
 his meaning dawned on me. 
 
 "All this is leading up to something, my child, 
 which I have wished to tell you, but you had no 
 room in your life for it before. Now, however, 
 listen. There is a man in Europe who has writ 
 ten a great poem-story. It is mystical, sym 
 bolic, dramatic, hence it is wonderfully suited to 
 music, to opera. It has been my great privilege 
 to be associated with him in work, and together 
 we have produced something that I hope will 
 live." 
 
 "You have written an opera!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Together with him, yes. His is the poem; 
 mine the setting of it. Still another man's will 
 be the dramatic production of it and a woman 
 will have the task of creating the leading role. 
 You see how many human brains it takes to in 
 terpret a creative work." 
 
 215
 
 THE WOMAN HEBSELF 
 
 Beside this breadth of view my own personal 
 troubles were fading, diminishing in the big 
 perspective of life as a whole. I caught the cur 
 rent of his mental atmosphere, and it filled me, 
 lifted me, recharged me with power. 
 
 "Dear friend," I said, "you are going to ask 
 me to sing that role?" 
 
 He nodded buoyantly. 
 
 "I am going to ask just that." 
 
 "But can I do it am I capable!" I asked 
 humbly. 
 
 "Ah. that we shall see. That must be tested; 
 but I think so, otherwise I should not suggest it. 
 I am, perhaps, speaking somewhat early, for I 
 have not yet told my collaborator, but I think I 
 can get you a hearing. I think so, or I should 
 not have spoken to-day. ' ' 
 
 "Why did you speak to-day?" I asked. 
 
 Again the kind hand fell on my shoulder. 
 
 "Because, when one has met a loss, one must 
 quickly put something in its place. If you allow 
 
 216
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 a vacuum in your mind, you paralyze your ener 
 gies, and," he added, gaily, "I cannot afford to 
 have your energies paralyzed. No, they are 
 worth too much to me. ' ' Then, almost solemnly, 
 "And they may be worth much to many hun 
 dreds of people." 
 
 "Do you really think so?" I felt hushed and 
 awed with dawning hope and purpose. 
 
 "I know it," he answered strongly. "You 
 have the great gift of expression in marvellous 
 degree." 
 
 Then rapidly he told me the story of the opera 
 with eager intensity he showed me, on the 
 piano, various themes, until my imagination 
 was kindled with the glow from his. I grasped 
 the scope of the story, its beautiful symbolism, 
 but the way it was worked out in music I knew 
 would take weeks of study. When I said some 
 thing of this sort, he answered : 
 
 "That is true, but you can begin at once. You 
 are sailing for America to-morrow. I follow in 
 
 217
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 a fortnight. We shall produce it before the end 
 of the year. You will have a couple of months 
 of study and preparation. Dedicate yourself to 
 work, my child. Believe me, it is the greatest 
 happiness in life in the long run. ' ' 
 
 "For a man, Maestro, perhaps." 
 
 "For a man or woman who has gifts above 
 the average/' he asserted. 
 
 "Was that why you looked relieved when I 
 told you I was not to marry?" 
 
 He hesitated a second, then said: 
 
 "No, Fraulein; if it had been any other man 
 than the Comte de Toreyne I would have al 
 lowed the artist in you to be sacrificed to the 
 woman to the ordinary woman's happiness 
 as the ordinary man can give it to her. But I 
 know the Toreynes. They have not got it in 
 ihern to give happiness. I know the race, three 
 generations of it, brilliant failures every one. 
 You remember I once spoke of his father's 
 sisters the three most beautiful women in 
 Paris in their day?" 
 
 218
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "I remember," I answered; "you said one of 
 them, Diane, was 'another story' not for the 
 young and happy." 
 
 His fine face saddened. 
 
 "I loved her," he said simply. "It is long 
 ago, when we were young. I worked for her ^ 
 two years. We were secretly betrothed ; but just 
 when I had won some measure of fame and suc 
 cess, she married, morganatically. It did not 
 satisfy her pride or her ambition she went 
 from man to man she troubled many destinies 
 she broke her own heart, and in the end her 
 mind gave way. For years she was mad, wild, 
 desolate, alone. Then, just before she died, I 
 saw her, once. She sent for me. She was quite 
 sane. She fell asleep with her hands in mine. 
 'I see now,' she said, 'that I have never lived* 
 she said that, who had lived so much ! ' ' 
 
 I could not speak, but tears stood in my eyes. 
 He had spoken with profound sincerity. 
 
 "I have told you this now," he continued, in 
 219
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 a different tone, "to show you how it all passes. 
 The glory and the tragedy of life; the despair 
 and the triumph it all passes all." 
 
 "Then what is it all for?" I asked, out of my 
 weary heart. 
 
 "For individual development, and the gift of 
 sympathy; for friendship that remains." 
 
 He stood like a king commanding my better 
 self to comprehend, to shake off its lethargy of 
 suffering, like a king royally offering me the 
 means wherewith to rise. And suddenly I 
 stooped and kissed his hand. 
 
 "For friendship that remains!" 
 
 Now, as I write, my eyes are brimming. The 
 white chalk cliffs are passing from my sight. 
 We are almost down to the Lizard. Good-bye, 
 England green, fair, merrie England! Three 
 months of happiness such as few lives hold. 
 Well, I had it and it, too, has passed. 
 
 220
 
 I have cabled Polly. She will meet the ship 
 "for friendship that remains." 
 
 New York, September 29th. 
 I am back in my old rooms in the same house 
 with Polly. Nothing is changed but me. Every 
 thing is just as it was when I shut the door and 
 turned the key of the little flat and went to Eng 
 land last spring. And now it is autumn. Ah ! 
 what a year ! what a year ! To any woman who 
 has passionately lived there must come a reac 
 tion, I suppose. It is upon me now when I yield 
 to the weakness of remembering 
 
 "November, the old lean widow, 
 
 Sniffs, and snivels, and shrills, 
 And the bowers are all dismantled, 
 
 And the long grass wets and chills; 
 And I hate these dismal dawnings, 
 
 These miserable even-ends, 
 These arts, and rags, and heel-taps 
 
 This dream of being merely friends." 
 
 We are not even "merely friends," he and I. 
 He has not answered my letter; does not know 
 where I am. 
 
 221
 
 What should I have done without Polly ? How 
 tender she has been, and true ! How full of in 
 finite resource and tact and sweetness! And 
 yet they say there is no friendship between 
 women! She has gathered friends around me 
 just to prove that I have not lost them, and 
 talked over her own work with me her last 
 new novel to show that she valued my poor 
 little opinion, and to divert my sad thoughts; 
 she has taken me out many tunes when her busy 
 brain should have been writing, I am sure. She 
 has made me seem valuable to her just when 
 my pride is in the dust. Oh, Dear of mine ! I 
 must try to be worth it to you for the sake of 
 your faith in me. 
 
 We speak little of Victor. She listened to my 
 account of why I had given up my marriage, late 
 one night, and I dreaded that her partisanship 
 would make her say bitter things of him. But 
 I did not know my Polly. 
 
 "We cannot judge," she said. "You always 
 222
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 shielded him from criticism, therefore I can 
 not presume to criticise him. Only I'm so 
 glad you did just what you did. There are bet 
 ter things in store for you than happiness ; out 
 of such suffering as yours something great will 
 come." 
 
 IT SHALL. 
 
 October 15th. 
 
 I am working very hard under my kind pro 
 fessor's rigid direction. There is not much time 
 to write in this book now. Every detail of my 
 new work has absorbed me. The music is mag 
 nificent the story enthralling it touches the 
 whole gamut of feeling love, sin, and the tri 
 umph over sin war, victory, death. There is 
 in it one of the most beautiful love scenes ever 
 written, followed by one of tragic intensity when 
 the young queen, who is in love with her coun 
 try's enemy, jeopardizes her people to satisfy 
 her passion. This places her in her enemy's 
 power, so that at the crucial moment, when she 
 
 223
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 should be leading her people to victory against 
 her lover, she is imprisoned in his tower, owing 
 to his treachery. The noise of battle rages with 
 out that battle music is so wonderful! and 
 she, realizing her lover's treachery, too late, 
 hurls herself against the doors in a frantic ef 
 fort to reach her people. The horror of her 
 struggle is told in terrible arpeggios that climb, 
 and crash, and break, like great ocean rollers. 
 Finally the doors give way, and she stands free 
 on the balcony risking her absolute life, for 
 getting herself, intent only on saving her peo 
 ple the noise and din of battle close about her. 
 There is a swift, dark change where the walls 
 of the inner apartment are removed and the 
 outer courtyard substituted. When the lights 
 go up again the battle music, which has contin 
 ued through the darkness, swells to a trium 
 phant victory song, and at its height comes the 
 sharp contrast the note of doom. The young 
 queen is wounded unto death. She has expi- 
 
 224
 
 THE WOMAN HEBSELF, 
 
 ated her weakness. Her people are victorious, 
 but she has paid with her life. The victory song 
 changes to a dirge. She is lifted from her horse, 
 and her lover is led in, a prisoner, in irons. He 
 is brought before her, and then comes the most 
 exquisite bit of music in the play her death- 
 song: 
 
 "Your love has put you in prison, 
 Mine has set me free! " 
 
 If I can only be equal to the demands of this 
 great role ! It is so wonderful that I am actu 
 ally to play it. They have trusted completely 
 to Herr Von Seebach's judgment regarding me, 
 so the opportunity is mine. He has turned into 
 a veritable tyrant, my dear old teacher. I live 
 by rule eat, exercise, even study by rule. Yet 
 he makes me get the very most out of a day and 
 out of myself; and the part is growing on me 
 like an obsession. I live with it all the time. 
 
 225
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 October 23d. 
 
 The days are flying by, crammed with work. 
 It is so intensely interesting and inspiring, and 
 exhausting. Every day I come home from re 
 hearsal tired to the very bones of me. If the 
 public could realize what goes to the making of 
 an opera the many kinds of brains, not only 
 the composer's, and the musical director's, but 
 all, every one's well, I don't think that five 
 dollars would seem much for a seat. It is like 
 a mosaic of intricate pattern every part of it 
 must fit in its place, or the whole is marred. 
 The people of the theatre are as disciplined as 
 soldiers, each has his appointed duty; and the 
 stage manager is like a general marshalling his 
 forces for dress-parade. And there are divi 
 sions and subdivisions the conductor, the stage 
 manager, his assistant, the prompter, the boss 
 carpenter, the head electrician, and an army of 
 scene-shifters and what they call "fly-men." 
 These live up high where the tops of the stage 
 
 226
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 trees are, and it is amazing to see the chaos of 
 houses and trees, tumbling down together, 
 straightened out by a sharp command of ' ' Take 
 up your centre line ! " or " Come down on your 
 short ! ' ' Then the reeling world is readjusted. 
 Then there is the ballet master, the tremendous 
 work of the chorus, to say nothing of the prin 
 cipals, each wrapped up in his own part. I have 
 just been telling Polly all about it over a cup 
 of tea. Now she is gone, and I have a moment 
 for my book, in front of my little fire. Soon 
 the little darky maid will come in and take away 
 the tea-things, and ask : ' ' Shall I light up, Miss 
 Junia ?" And how her accent will bring back 
 the old Virginia days the devoted old servants 
 and " Dad "and "Grandma." Ah! what a 
 different person I was then ! In what a differ 
 ent atmosphere I lived! How evanescent life 
 is! full of varying, vanishing phases. Can 
 this be I, Junia Grey Junia Trent? No! no! 
 No more that just Junia Grey. What will my 
 
 227
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELP 
 
 dear father say? And what would Victor de 
 Toreyne say if he knew? Ah! I must try to 
 forget. I must try to bury myself in this new 
 work, I must try to care to succeed for the sake 
 of those who love me, to justify their faith. But 
 since what I say here cannot be heard, I will 
 confess to myself: "Junia, you've missed it, 
 somehow. With everything in your favour the 
 great gifts of birth and breeding, and happy cir 
 cumstance, and love, and homage, and special 
 gifts of your own still you've missed it the 
 best of life! Poor old girl, you've got to try 
 for second best that's what we come to at 
 thirty." 
 But thank God for the second chance ! 
 
 November 9th. 
 
 Everything is nearing completion now; the 
 production is growing every day nearer to 
 smooth perfection. It has been the most inter 
 esting and absorbing thing I have ever known, 
 
 228
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 to watch, it evolve. I studied the opera in its 
 entirety first, then every part of it, as we began 
 to rehearse ; then I think I began to weigh and 
 balance every part, my own included, in relation 
 to the whole story ; and finally, the interplay of 
 characters, their relation to each other, the ef 
 fect of motive on motive. Most of my associates, 
 ever so much more experienced singers and act 
 ors than I, have been most kind men and wom 
 en both. They have all helped me with stage 
 technique and suggestions, and I have listened 
 most gratefully. Perhaps this has endeared me 
 to them, for we always like those whom we help ; 
 but it seems as if every one of them had a per 
 sonal wish for my own success. I have heard so 
 much of the jealousies and bickerings among 
 artists but I have seen none of it, so far. Ma 
 dame Doreno, the contralto, an Italian, with 
 beautiful depth of tone and a fine gift of inter 
 pretation, has been most kind. She showed me 
 how to "make up" at our first dress rehearsal. 
 
 229
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 It was a most amusing process. I have done it 
 many times since, to make myself perfect in the 
 art before our opening. My familiar face turns 
 into something quite different. I instinctively 
 paint the look of the character I am assuming 
 into it ; so that when I stand in the clothes that 
 character wears, and walk through the scenes 
 that are her environment, and sing her music 
 or recitative, from her inner mentality, why, I 
 really am her for the moment. It is not that 
 "you put yourself in her place," but that you 
 take yourself away, and put her in your place. 
 I said something of this to Madame Doreno, and 
 she replied: 
 
 "Oh, my dear, that is what gives atmosphere 
 and conviction, that sense of reality, that trick 
 of sincerity. Only an artist has it. They are 
 able to obliterate themselves, to sink their own 
 identity in their portrayal. But they seldom 
 make stars. " 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 230
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Ah, artists have atmosphere, technique, im 
 agination, and are able to project all three ! 
 across the footlights, but 'stars' have person 
 ality often so great that they need nothing else, 
 to succeed." 
 
 It was an interesting point. I have jotted it 
 down to think of. 
 
 November 13th. 
 
 Only a few days now before the great open 
 ing. When I think of it a horrible sick faint- 
 ness comes over me, and I cannot sing at all. 
 I know the responsibility that devolves on me 
 my dear friend and Maestro 's whole work, the 
 thousands that have gone into the production, 
 the employment of the many people in the cast 
 and sometimes it seems more than I can sus 
 tain. Then I call every energy to bear me up, 
 to conquer the cowardly inadequacy I feel in 
 myself; but sometimes during the strain of 
 these last rehearsals I have all but fainted away 
 
 231
 
 ,THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 with sheer anxiety and fright ''stage fright," 
 Madame Doreno calls it, and she says I am for 
 tunate to have it beforehand. It doesn't seem 
 to me fortunate to have it at any time, but I 
 suppose she knows. She is most kind and sym 
 pathetic, and says it is almost unprecedented 
 that a singer of no experience should be entrust 
 ed with the opportunity of a lifetime. 
 
 The opportunity of a lifetime! It seems to 
 be coming to me like a great billow that will 
 either break and crush me or bear me high and 
 swift to the shore of achievement. 
 
 November 19th. 
 
 It is over at last. I am sitting up in bed the 
 morning after, shaking still with the tremour 
 and the tears of it. Dear God ! I took a desper 
 ate flight in the dark last night, and it landed 
 me somewhere near heaven. I did not know 
 there could be such moments in a human life 
 that one could so absolutely forget one's own, 
 
 232
 
 little self. I cannot think yet I can only feel 
 it all over again. 
 
 It was such a relief to be able to tell Polly 
 all about it this morning. Dear soul, she came 
 in and sat by my bedside while I tried to take 
 coffee and rolls, as usual, and let me talk and 
 talk to my mind's relief and my heart's content. 
 She was so proud that it made me cry ; she was 
 radiant with happiness for me. She brought in 
 a bundle of papers with long and wonderful ac 
 counts of it, and we have been living it over 
 again. She was there, though I didn't know it 
 I didn't know anything last night but what 
 I had to do. When she said gaily : 
 
 " Junia, how does it feel to be a great success? 
 to be hailed as the coming singer? to be " 
 
 But the tension gave way in me and I broke 
 down weakly. 
 
 1 1 Tell me all about it, ' ' said wise Polly. < ' Cry 
 if you like, but talk it will do you good.'* 
 
 "At first, in my dressing-room, I was so 
 233
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 afraid so sick I thought I had neither the 
 physical strength nor the mental energy to go 
 through with it. I wanted to run away yes, 
 really! I could hear the hum and buzz of the 
 great house, I could feel the expectancy and I 
 couldn 't get a long breath ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, Junia, dear! What did you do?" 
 "Polly, I collapsed. I just grovelled on the 
 floor ! Oh, no one would believe it, but the maid 
 will tell you. Then suddenly I thought of Joan 
 of Arc I suppose because that scene when the 
 queen rides in at the head of her troops reminds 
 one of the Dauntless Maid and I thought of 
 how she said she could never have done it but 
 for 'her voices.' And I thought 'If I could only 
 hear those voices now!' and somewhere I grew 
 very still inside listening. Then I prayed. I 
 think it was praying, but I don't know. It was 
 a great reaching out, and up, without any co 
 herent expression; and I seemed to feel all the 
 other minds and hearts and souls on the other 
 234
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 side of the curtain waiting not for me, but for 
 the message that would speak to them in dif 
 ferent ways in the music itself. I was only the 
 mouthpiece. Then all my fear and responsibil 
 ity fell from me. I saw that something greater 
 than I was behind me that it would flow 
 through me to them and I loved them all, those 
 men and women who, like me, 'war and suffer 
 and pass on' and then I did hear 'the voice, 7 
 the voice of the woman I was to play who had 
 to sin in order to understand, who had to suffer 
 in order to attain, who had to fight and fall 
 in order to be free; and then the first bars of 
 the overture began, and I stood ready in the 
 wings tranquil, with long, deep breaths.'* 
 
 "And then," said Polly with tears in her eyes, 
 "you went on the stage and played as few wom 
 en ever play. That love scene in the garden 
 that duet there was never anything so exqui 
 site." 
 
 She reached for one of the papers and read 
 235
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 me an extract. I listened in amazement. It 
 didn't seem to me they could be speaking of 
 me. 
 
 " 'Madame Junia Grey, in a gown of green, 
 which made one think of the earth in spring, 
 won the audience from the first note she uttered. 
 Guinevere, riding through the May woods with 
 Launcelot x was not more a queen. She has a 
 voice of singular purity and power, but it 
 seemed to sink into insignificance when com 
 pared with her histrionic gift of interpretation. 
 One feels a depth of temperament and poetry 
 in her that lead one to prophesy great things for 
 this newcomer. Her role gave her exceptional 
 opportunities, and she rose to every one of them 
 with the surety of the born artist. There is a 
 touch of genius in this surety. Whether she was 
 portraying the passion and fervour of the young 
 queen in the first act and a scene musically 
 more exquisite has seldom been written or 
 
 236
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 whether, as in the last act, she rises to a height 
 of tragic intensity, she was always stronger 
 even than the situation. Her touch is true in 
 the very middle of the note, neither under nor 
 overplayed. Her last act was a really great tri 
 umph. With superb abandon she visualized the 
 orchestration, which mounts to a fine crescendo 
 and climax. Again and again she hurled her 
 self like a beaten wave against the door that 
 must open to her. One felt the actual shock of 
 the impact. When it finally fell, and her voice 
 broke forth, fierce and true, her audience was 
 electrified. From then until the final curtain 
 they were under a spell. But it was not until 
 the very end that one realized the quality of 
 voice that Madame Grey brings to her art. Pre 
 viously her dramatic power had overshadowed 
 it. In the last song, however the death-song 
 the beauty of tone, and a rare spiritual quality, 
 both in the music and the woman who sang it, 
 
 237
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 held the whole house in a hush that was signifi 
 cant.' 
 
 "What do you think of that?" said Polly, 
 throwing the paper aside excitedly. "Junia, 
 you have been deceiving me all these years 
 you have been pretending you are not a gen 
 ius!" 
 
 The good laughter at her absurdity saved me 
 from tears that were perilously near again. 
 Then she read me more extracts. They all 
 seemed to concur in the belief that Herr Von 
 Seebach had written a masterly work and dis 
 covered a person of extraordinary talent. 
 
 "How does it feel?" asked Polly curiously. 
 
 "As if some one had changed places with me. 
 This surely can't be I!" 
 
 Then the telephone rang, and Polly answered 
 it. It was Herr Von Seebach, with kind inqui 
 ries and jubilant congratulations for his new 
 "star." Polly became so merry and excited 
 
 238
 
 over this 'phone conversation that I just lay 
 and laughed at her. 
 
 "He says that we have one of the greatest 
 successes of the day ; that they will demand you 
 when it is produced abroad ; that you were mag 
 nificent; that you have a splendid future, and 
 are his 'dear Fraulein' bless him! and he is 
 coming around later, to make sure you are all 
 right," she said all in a breath as she hung up 
 the receiver. 
 
 " Thank Heaven, I haven't got to do it again 
 until Friday for, oh, Polly! I am tired all 
 over!" 
 
 She left me after a while, and I lay for a long 
 time thinking. This is what it means, then, to 
 be an artist to have given up everything else 
 in life to slave and suffer and succeed at last 
 and pay for it all with the very blood of your 
 heart. The one face in the world is not in the 
 stage box and the one voice in the world does 
 not join in the plaudits. Alone one fights, alone 
 
 239
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 one wins alone one receives one's reward. 
 Does it compensate ? 
 
 A great nostalgia for home seized me for 
 humdrum, happy things for the hills and the 
 sea: 
 
 "The quiet country places 
 Where all the old men have rosy faces 
 And all the young maidens quiet eyes," 
 
 where the winds blow " austere and pure.'* 
 Perhaps it is a great nervous reaction after the 
 strain of last night, but I feel I would give much 
 to escape out of it all to a place of dream. 
 Yet I realize my dreaming days are passed ; that 
 henceforth I touch reality. Life stretches away 
 full of energy and effort, full of work and 
 achievement, and I ask myself for what? To 
 what end? for what motive? 
 
 November 25th. 
 
 After my second performance, which passed 
 off wonderfully, also, dear Mrs. Chester came 
 to call on me. I had not seen her for months. 
 
 240
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 She was most cordial and sweet, and asked why 
 I had neglected all my friends and dropped so 
 completely out of my old life, and expostulated, 
 and scolded, and petted me all at once. 
 
 "We are all very proud of you," she said. 
 "You seem to have found your metier. It is 
 better, far better, than marrying again, espe 
 cially the Comte de Toreyne. I was afraid you. 
 were going to do that, Junia. I hear his play 
 was a flat failure in Paris. What a fool the 
 man is!" 
 
 "Why, I thought you considered him so 
 clever ! ' ' 
 
 "Brilliant as a skyrocket, my dear, and will 
 fall as quickly because he hasn't the stamina 
 of character behind his brains. You will see. 
 
 He'll go to pieces like all those nervous, erratic 
 
 f 
 
 men, through sheer excess of himself." 
 
 But I didn't want to talk like this about him 
 who holds my heart, so I turned the conversa 
 tion to other subjects. 
 
 241
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 But afterward it vaguely troubled me. Have 
 I done wrong in separating myself from him in 
 his struggle just because I thought he did not 
 value me enough? Ought I to have sacrificed 
 my pride to his genius and his need of me? Per 
 haps I should have stayed and helped him. Aft 
 er all, he loved me all he could. That it did not 
 suffice me was not his fault. He gave me all he 
 had. I, too, am erratic. That's why I love and 
 understand him. Why should I indulge my self 
 ish, sensitive pride without giving him a chance 
 to even protest, and fly away across the Atlantic 
 just because I saw a certain hesitancy, a certain 
 unwillingness in him? Ah, but that's it! No 
 self-respecting woman could be married under 
 such conditions. Still, men have been hesitating 
 and unwilling since marriage was first invented, 
 yet women have married them and made them 
 happy. Why should I be different? 
 
 I am weary of this self-questioning and 
 dreaming. Like Psyche, when I light my lamp 
 
 242
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 of reason and look my god of love in the face 
 I lose him. All we can know, we Psyche-women, 
 is to love, close and secret, in the dark of our 
 hearts, without inquiry or examination into tha 
 cause and inspiration of it all. 
 
 December 4th. 
 
 This wonderful year is drawing to its close. 
 What a different person it leaves me! In the 
 forcing-house of emotion, my powers, like 
 plants, have shot up almost overnight. From 
 poverty and failure and loneliness, from sin and 
 sorrow, I have reached affluence, success and 
 any society I choose. These are good, but it is 
 better still to feel my father's pride, my friends' 
 faith, justified. Through all the trouble and 
 sadness these never once reproached me. I think 
 if it had not been for them, my father and Polly 
 principally, I should have been tempted to 
 end it all long ago, out of sheer exhaustion of 
 effort. But there they stood, their faces front- 
 
 243
 
 ing me on my desk, my father's saying, "I will 
 provide for you ; let me know your needs ' ' ; and 
 never a word of blame, never a word of "My 
 child, I told you this, " never a hint of anything 
 but solicitude and sympathy, and great, fine- 
 hearted feeling. Oh, Father o * mine, who have 
 been father and mother both! And there also 
 stood Polly, with "Anything you like, Junia, 
 from me," written under her picture. You've 
 kept your word. Oh, dears ! I had to try with 
 all the might that was in me to vindicate your 
 trust in me to wipe out, if I could, the one 
 awful thing I ever did in all my life. But it's 
 done it's done it can never be undone ! There 
 it is. It can never be undone! Oh, I hide 
 my eyes from my eyes I loathe it so ! It took 
 courage to do it, Polly, you said? It does take 
 courage to sin the sin you detest, to attain the 
 end you desire but sometime surely I'll be for 
 given? "With what measure ye mete, it shall 
 be measured to you again." I must believe that. 
 
 244
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 And my measure of expiation shall be "pressed 
 down and running over." , 
 
 How little the world guesses this interior life 
 of mine ! Even Polly doesn't know. I have one 
 little room where I write, and no one comes in 
 here but me, except the little darky maid occa 
 sionally, to clean up. It is very orderly and 
 quiet, and full of pictures of him, and I come 
 here to rest and dream, and write, and to realize 
 how much I owe to him. The world and life are 
 opening up to me. Heart and mind are busy. 
 Every power is being called into play and all 
 this I owe to him. 
 
 The delicate lips, the cleft chin, the fine, sweet 
 eyes, the sensitiveness in every line, almost like 
 a woman's the splendid head nobly set on a 
 man's shoulders, these were all worth loving 
 just for themselves alone ; but it is You behind 
 them You that holds me. You, with your 
 head full of dreams and heart full of memories. 
 You, Boy, with your brave intentions you, 
 
 245
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 Man, who taught me, Woman, the meaning of it 
 all. Sometimes I wish I had not left you to your 
 own separate struggle I even wish I had mar 
 ried you after all. It would have meant the 
 right to stand by you whether you succeed or 
 fail, go up or down ; all the more if you fail if 
 you should need me. And you do need me, more 
 than ever now, when you have met failure and 
 criticism, and, I hear, financial loss, and to some 
 extent social ostracism. Oh, I wish I could help 
 you! 
 
 I have always despised women who indulge 
 in unrequited love. God, and nature, and life, 
 and our own selves fight against so monstrous 
 a thing. There is a kind of weakness, fatuity, 
 in it. If love is ineffective it should be trans 
 muted into something else like work, or art, or 
 like friendship. When, twice a week, I face my 
 audience, some of them brilliant, distinguished 
 men and women but all of them men and wom 
 en with things in common with me the unex- 
 
 246
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 pressed love I feel for one flows out to the many, 
 and I am lifted far out of myself. Their learn 
 ing, listening hearts are laid bare to me. Be 
 tween us is the common chord of life, connecting 
 us, as only the notes which blend can connect. 
 The chromatics of tears and laughter, the crash 
 of discord, the illumination of harmony, are 
 things we each know audience and artist both. 
 This is the foundation between us. On this we 
 build our creation, our conception, our veritable 
 castle in the air, since it is far above the ordi 
 nary levels of our daily lives. Here we meet, 
 in these dim, unexplored regions of thought; 
 here we are lifted for a while, a part of the 
 great universal life that is in all things. And 
 fragments of immortal words seem to surge 
 through the music: 
 
 "The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too 
 
 hard, 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the 
 
 sky, 
 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 
 Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." 
 
 247
 
 THE WOMAN HEKSELF 
 
 And 
 
 "Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of weal and woe; 
 But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear; 
 The rest may reason, and welcome: 'tis we musicians 
 know." 
 
 There are times when I feel I do know, when 
 I can almost hear the note that everything in 
 the world gives forth, climbing up, up, till it 
 makes a sound that reaches to the stars, and 
 joins 
 
 "The song the spheres sing endlessly." 
 
 December 8th. 
 
 I had a great surprise this morning a letter 
 from Victor de Toreyne. He said he had just 
 arrived in New York in time to hear me sing 
 last night. He said it was wonderful the whole 
 opera and my particular part of it finely done. 
 Then he asked if he might come and see me this 
 afternoon, giving me his 'phone number. So, 
 with the old beating of the heart, I called him 
 up, and left a message saying I should expect 
 him at five. 
 
 248
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 When he came into the room, at dusk, he 
 looked into my eyes for a second, then bowed 
 his face in the hands I held out to him, and 
 kissed them both. 
 
 "I came," he said simply, "on the first boat, 
 after I heard of your success. Previous to that 
 I did not know where to find you." 
 
 "I hoped you wouldn't try." 
 
 "To say the truth," he answered, "I didn't 
 try at first. I didn't take your letter quite seri 
 ously. I thought, 'She will not really go,' or, 
 'If she does, she will come back.' " 
 
 ' ' Victor ! Did you know so little of me ! " 
 
 "So I thought, 'I will let her alone for a lit 
 tle, and she'll come to herself and to me in 
 time.' It is always a man's best game to wait." 
 
 " Oh 1 1 thought it was a woman's waiting ! ' ' 
 
 "But when you didn't write again," he con 
 tinued, disregarding my interruption, "I grew 
 seriously anxious " 
 
 "Not really?" 
 
 249
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 -and returned from Paris to make sure. 
 
 I was genuinely astonished to find you had actu 
 ally gone!" 
 
 I rose with a suffocating feeling of revolt. 
 That he should have so underestimated the 
 strength of my feeling, of my motive, of my 
 sacrifice of happiness for self-respect, humili 
 ated me unbearably. There was such a tempest 
 of feeling within me that I dared not speak. 
 He continued: 
 
 "So I followed you, Junia, as soon as I heard 
 from the cable dispatches where you were and 
 what you were doing. I have come to take you 
 back with me as my wife." 
 
 "That is impossible now." I spoke with 
 great difficulty, trying to keep back all but the 
 necessary words. 
 
 His face went white. 
 
 "You no longer care for me, then?" 
 
 "It isn't that." 
 
 "Then," he cried, rising and facing me, 
 250
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "what in God's name is it, Junia? Don't tor 
 ture me with any more of these vagaries. You 
 must marry me nothing else is fair to either 
 of us. We have gone too far. You must submit, 
 and let me think for you ! ' ' 
 
 Then all my control gave way, and I rounded 
 on him fiercely. 
 
 * * Submit ! " I cried. ' * Yes, when you can show 
 me something bigger than myself to submit to ! 
 WTien you can show me a man who knows how 
 to care for a woman, protect her, stand between 
 her and the things that hurt instead of heap 
 ing hurts upon her ! Oh, I have tried and tried 
 to excuse you to my heart, to champion you 
 even against my reason. I have forgiven things 
 no woman should forgive unspeakable things 
 unbelievable things till I am weary of the 
 degradation of loving you! Oh, I ought not 
 reproach you it is myself I should blame. I 
 made myself cheap to you I gave you myself ! 
 If I had sold myself you would have valued me 
 
 251
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 more! But I just threw it all at your feet. I 
 let you see and guess and take and have. It 
 was my glory to give unsparingly entirely 
 absolutely. Ah, God hates fools, they say, and 
 no wonder. I hate myself, remembering how 
 I worshiped you! 
 
 "But now now that I see and understand 
 I at least am big enough to bear the conse 
 quences alone, to stand on my own feet, and say 
 to you there is a duty I owe myself before any 
 I owe you. There is a devotion I owe not to 
 you but to my own ideal. ' ' 
 
 There was a long silence between us, while 
 he stood by the window, looking out into the 
 failing light. I saw the droop of his shoulders 
 and head, the nervous hands tightly clasped be 
 hind his back. And, as always, pity and pas 
 sion, those prime ministers of a woman's fate, 
 clamoured in my heart for him; but I turned 
 away my eyes. 
 
 After a long time he turned to me a different 
 face ; it was as if a blight had gone over it. 
 
 252
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 ' ' I have no defense, Junia, ' ' he answered qui 
 etly. "All that you say is true. Yet I had 
 hoped that your love was big enough to for 
 give me and understand me not that I de 
 serve it, but that I need it." 
 
 He took up his hat and coat and moved to 
 ward the door, but before he reached it some 
 thing like a clean wind blew through my mind 
 blew its stress and storm quite away, so that 
 when he turned to say good-by he saw my hands 
 held out to him. 
 
 "Come back!" I took his things from him 
 and laid them down, then came and stood be 
 fore him. "It is you who do not understand 
 but try to now ! We are not the same man and 
 woman who fell in love two years ago and more. 
 It is not that love is dead, but it has changed 
 us we are on different mental planes now; we 
 look at things from a different standpoint, we 
 almost speak a different language. It would be 
 impossible for us to find happiness together 
 now." 
 
 253
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 "Impossible for you, Junia?" 
 
 "For either of us. Sit down, and let us talk 
 quietly. ' ' 
 
 He obeyed like a child which he really is; 
 but after a moment he said, looking into the 
 fire: 
 
 "All these phrases of yours they only mean 
 one thing that you have ceased to care for 
 me." 
 
 "Oh, no! no! no! It isn't that it can never 
 be that ! Oh ! how shall I make you understand? 
 How shall I reach you ? ' ' 
 
 I despaired of finding the words to put my 
 feelings in, and stretched out my hands toward 
 him, but without touching him, in a surge of 
 tenderness. 
 
 "Dear, it isn't that I don't love you and 
 yearn toward you but there is something in 
 me I don't know how to express it so so big 
 it will not permit me to yield to a smaller 
 thing. I can't compromise with it, and I can't 
 
 254
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 surrender it. Once I gave it. But it never 
 can be given again." 
 
 There was a strange hush between us, and the 
 words seemed to go on in the stillness, "It never 
 can be given again" that wild, sweet, won 
 derful thing that comes but once that tortures 
 and teaches us. And remembering the glory of 
 it, the tears shook me silently. 
 
 And he understood. With a sudden sob, he 
 laid his face in his down-dropped hands. 
 
 "Ah, June forgive me!" 
 
 "Child," I said with my hand on his head, 
 "I, too, should ask forgiveness for yielding to 
 less than the best in you and in myself. But 
 we each work out our own salvation. In differ 
 ent ways we find ourselves." 
 
 * ' And when we do ! ' ' 
 
 "Then perhaps we find each other." 
 
 Suddenly he threw his arms about me, and his 
 voice, tense and low with feeling, was crying : 
 
 "I can't bear it! I want you! I need you! 
 255
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 I must have you ! You are just the one woman 
 in the world for me ! You know the best and the 
 worst of me you understand. And God, and 
 Fate, and your own self, have given you to me. 
 I intend to hold what I have ! ' * 
 
 And for just one terrible second the old inti 
 mate swoon of the senses, like an encroaching 
 tide, threatened to overwhelm my soul and 
 drown its deep instinct that was whispering to 
 me. Only for a second, and then I took a step 
 away. 
 
 ' ' You can 't hold me any more, ' ' I said. ' ' Oh, 
 how shall I make you understand without hurt 
 ing you too much! Don't you see, I can't yield 
 again except to something bigger than myself? 
 My love for you at first was that bigger than 
 I. But now I am bigger than my love. I had 
 no sense of proportion in the old days. You 
 were all all all. That is why all this pain had 
 to come to me, I suppose, that I might learn the 
 other things of life. I shall learn them, but not 
 
 256
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 as your wife. Oh! can't you understand? I 
 should give and give, coin and recoin myself for 
 you in every way a woman can, and then in mo 
 ments of weakness, when I, too, need under 
 standing, and that help and strength for which 
 a woman naturally turns to her mate, I should 
 turn in vain, and ask of you a kind of bread you 
 could not give. That is the habit of marriage 
 the natural habit of a woman to look to her man 
 for the bigger heart and the broader brain than 
 she finds in herself. And if she doesn't find it 
 in him then she must go alone." 
 
 He stood listening, with his elbow on the man 
 telpiece and his head in his hand. 
 
 "Poor girl! poor girl!" he said when I had 
 finished. ' ' I have nothing to offer you nothing 
 to ask you to come back to only myself and 
 I'm done for. You are wise to give me up." 
 
 And at last God gave me the great words to 
 speak that exalted his humility: 
 
 "Oh, man-child! It is to you I owe every- 
 257
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 thing I have in life its passion and poetry 
 its reality its whole great meaning. All I have 
 that is really mine all I am I owe to you to 
 the thoughts your genius kindled in me to the 
 love you inspired.'* 
 
 "Junia," he said brokenly, "you bow me to 
 the earth with such a tribute. I have not de 
 served it." 
 
 "You could not have won it else," I answered. 
 ' ' Oh, if I could only inspire in you the same love 
 for me not the kind you have for me now 
 but the kind that should be the whip and spur 
 to your spirit and its rest as well ! Then you 
 would find yourself through me, as I found my 
 self through you." 
 
 "I can't fight it out alone," he said tiredly. 
 
 And in passionate pity and sadness I an 
 swered : 
 
 "We all must, dear. Every one goes alone 
 in the great moments of life, in the ultimate 
 things." 
 
 258
 
 THE WOMAN HERSELF 
 
 We were looking each other in the eyes at the 
 end, deep calling to deep. Then with a swift, 
 beautiful movement, that one of another race 
 could not have made, he threw his arms around 
 my knees, hiding his face there. And my tears 
 fell on his hair as I stooped and kissed it. 
 
 "Go to school go to school, little lad, and so 
 will I ; but by and by, when we have learned the 
 lesson, come back come home." 
 
 He arose and held my hands against his 
 breast, and I said, realizing him anew: 
 
 "I think you were my life's real starting 
 point." 
 
 "And you are mine's far goal." 
 
 And then he was gone. 
 
 And I fell on the hearth-rug, sobbing, pray 
 ing; for our great moments come and go 
 leaving a trail of tears. 
 
 December 21st. 
 
 Once again I am on the ocean, sailing away 
 from the past, from "the old and dear, and the 
 
 259
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 changing year," to play on the Continent the 
 part I created here. Life stretches before me 
 full of work and energy and purpose, full of 
 friendship old and new "for friendship 
 that remains." 
 
 The last I saw of America was Polly, with 
 outstretched arms that blew me kisses, and the 
 brave little smile that I knew hid dimming eyes 
 like my own. This is good-by. Different lands, 
 different times, different work will divide us, 
 but never again in this world will come to me 
 a friendship so precious, so rich and ripe in 
 experience, so hallowed with association, from 
 far-off little-girl days. Little Polly, in your 
 gingham dress, down in Virginia long ago lit 
 tle Polly on the dock, waving me good-bye just 
 now you are one and the same child-woman 
 and woman-child. 
 
 I feel as if I had at last found myself, like 
 Kipling's ship. Things and people pass, are 
 transmuted into something else. Transmuta- 
 
 260
 
 THE WOMAN HEESELF 
 
 tion is the only thing that lasts. And what 
 transmutation is to matter, transfiguration is to 
 the spirit. It pierces the infinite and claims its 
 own. Therefore, in spite of all our modern 
 unbelief, when I think of him I think of a bridge 
 between two eternities, the Now and the To Be, 
 between worlds the Here and the Hereafter. 
 The force that drew us together will weld us 
 again, by and by. Otherwise, of what use the 
 race, or the reward thereof, to the runner? 
 
 Poor old passing year, with its wrenches and 
 heartaches, the birth-pangs of the new. Go, and 
 God-speed, into the past where the golden mem 
 ories dwell. For you, old year, yesterday; for 
 him, for me the open window and To-mor 
 row! 
 
 THE 
 
 261
 
 THE WOMAN, THE 
 
 MAN AND THE 
 
 MONSTER 
 
 A ROMANCE 
 By CARLETON DAW 
 
 THE plot of this novel is surprisingly 
 unique. Some of the situations are 
 so startling as fairly to take away the 
 breath. The opening scene discloses a 
 woman, stripped of clothing, bound to a 
 tree. There are such dramatic denouements 
 as to make the intrigue which is the main 
 thread of the story interesting to an intense 
 degree. The beauty of the heroine, her de 
 lightful mentality, her quickness of wit and 
 perception, are all charming features of the 
 story. And there are romantic hillside love 
 scenes, with kisses colored by the sunset, 
 and the daintiest of wooings and cooings 
 with always a mystery and a fearsome 
 shadow in the background. 
 
 12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.50
 
 THE ISLE OF 
 
 TEMPTATION 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 By ARTHUR STANLEY 
 COLLETON 
 
 IN the Isle of Temptation, we offer a 
 novel of the intensest dramatic quality, 
 a novel magnificently aglow with life. The 
 author is an unflinching realist, but one who 
 has known how to invest his unparalleled 
 fearlessness and truthfulness with dignity, 
 with sincerity, with sombre beauty. 
 
 It is the story of a youth who came to 
 New York, " that terrible enchantress ;" 
 whom the city took into her magical em 
 brace and fed with the subtle honey of her 
 poisonous blooms. 
 
 The author is especially powerful in his 
 delineation of female characters. We do 
 not hesitate to say that Kate Bathurst, Lucy 
 Treat and Clara Earle are women worthy 
 of Balzac relentlessly and powerfully pre 
 sented. 
 
 12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.50
 
 A WOMAN OF 
 UNCERTAIN AGE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 By MARY ANNE BERRY 
 
 OUEER things happen among the 
 SMART SET; Newport is a city 
 that has its secrets. What is it that really 
 happens, sometimes, when all the mis 
 chievous little Cupids are in a sarcastic 
 mood? the events in the pages of A 
 WOMAN OF UNCERTAIN AGE. 
 
 Her age was extremely uncertain, to be 
 sure. Not so her beauty, her charm, her 
 passion, the mingled joyousness and pathos 
 of her fate. And as for her adventures 
 they were quite too surprising to be re 
 vealed here. 
 
 The book is no deliberately studied bit o 
 sophisticated art. Fresh, passionate, im 
 mediate, it welled from the author's heart, 
 from her rich and romantic experience of 
 life, from her freedom and flexibility of 
 spirit. There is not a slow page in it, not 
 one that is not piquante, brave, sparkling. 
 
 12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.50
 
 AFTER THE 
 PARDON 
 
 A NOVEL 
 By MATILDE SERAO 
 
 THE finding of a new presentation of 
 a phase of human passions is a 
 delight rarely encountered. In this romance 
 of hearts, righteous jealousy and satiated 
 passions combine to bring about an extra 
 ordinary marital situation. And then, again 
 jealousy is responsible for both disaster and 
 happiness. 
 
 Creatures made of miserable clay could 
 not comprehend the sublimity of the love 
 which sways the Latins and bends them to 
 its desires. Warm blood flows in their 
 veins. In them the emotional nature and 
 the finer intelligence are ever at variance. 
 Always there is the struggle and mainly the 
 emotional is predominant. Their passions 
 force them beyond all laws and duties, 
 beyond all vows. 
 
 12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.50
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 9*1990 
 
 Form L9-Series 4939
 
 000 245 995