I remember once--I was probably thirteen or fourteen--going into the bedroom to bid my parents good night, when, having kissed them, as I started to leave the bed, Father threw out his arm; and, seeing it in the half light, and thinking he did it to motion me back, I bent down and swiftly kissed him again--an unusual thing for either him or me. No sooner had I done it than my cheeks got hot as fire: perhaps I had misunderstood his gesture; he may have just happened to stretch out his arm, and was not beckoning me at all. Upstairs I went, torturing myself with the query which I never solved. Whether or not he had called me back, I now know he was not sorry to get the extra kiss. Why couldn’t I have thus comforted myself then? I suppose I was hungry for more demonstration of affection than I got, yet ashamed to show it. Sister, not at all demonstrative, provoked demonstration in me; the curve of her cheek, and her long eyelashes resting upon it, appealed to me as a child’s beauty appeals; I longed to kiss her at inopportune times, and sometimes did not resist. Half annoyed at me, she thought it nonsense, I suppose. As we grew up, when she would be fitting a dress for me, I would try to snatch kisses, sometimes calling forth her impatience, at others her laughing dexterity as she eluded me. I admired her prettiness, but was never jealous of her, though she could dance and skate, and do all such things, with an ease and grace I could never acquire. Making friends more readily than I, being sociable, lively, and even-tempered, she had plenty of beaux while I had none. But I had friends among the beaux of the other girls. Although I did not want them for beaux, I should have been unhappy had I not had them for friends--I understood myself well enough to know that much then, though the general impression among my schoolmates was that I cared nothing for the boys. My hypersensitiveness about the life of the affections was apparent in the way I felt when Father would bid us all good-bye: When he kissed Mother I would always turn away. It never seemed right to look on; perhaps, partly, because it made me want to cry; but also because it seemed as though _I had no right_. Even to-day, if I see lovers on the stage whose acting is good enough to give the sense of reality, I find myself turning away--it seems too intimate for me to witness.