Of course it's all over for me now--and I can only just picture what I think it ought to be.

I never had it.

I mean I never had that kind of love I have dreamed about, and it seems silly for an old maid to even talk of such a thing.

But love to my mind ought to be the everything of life! If I loved a man----" Here she suddenly paused, and a wave of colour flushed her cheeks.

Helmsley never took his eyes off her face.
"Yes ?" he said, tentatively--"Well!--go on--if you loved a man ?----" "If I loved a man, David,"-- she continued, slowly, clasping her hands meditatively behind her back, and looking thoughtfully into the glowing centre of the fire--"I should love him so completely that I should never think of anything in which he had not the first and greatest share.