"I have avoided letting you see that I need them," she said.
"You--men don't like--" She tried to say it all in a rush, but the words would not come.
"I am beginning to be a little deaf," she went on.

"To deceive you about that, I have sometimes answered you without really knowing what you said." "Anything more, Ailie ?" "My accomplishments--they were never great, but Kitty and I thought my playing of classical pieces--my fingers are not sufficiently pliable now.

And I--I forget so many things." "But, Ailie--" "Please let me tell you.

I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for many little peculiarities that--that I recognized as my own.

They had grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now I--I have tried, but I cannot alter them." "Is that all, Ailie ?" "No." The last seemed to be the hardest to say.