"I'm thirty-two now. When I was nineteen--a year older than you--I cared for a man, and he for me. We cared for each other--terribly. But he was poor; and not only that, he came from people whom mine looked down upon. We loved each other so much, though, that I would have married him in spite of all; but my relations thought it would ruin my life, and they advised, and persuaded, and implored and insisted, until I was weak enough to give the man up. They took me to Europe, and because I had some money an Italian prince we met in Rome wanted to marry me. They almost argued me into consenting, and though they didn't quite, the news went home to Kentucky that I was engaged. The man I really loved--loved dearly all the time, though I was trying to forget him--believed it. Why shouldn't he, since I'd given him up for the reasons I had? He was Catholic, and he went into a monastery we have in Kentucky, and became a monk. No one ever wrote to me about it. All my friends thought the less I heard of him the better. And two years later, when I went back home--_not_ engaged, and thinking in my heart that there was, and always would be, only one man for me in the world--it was to learn that that man had taken the final vows which would separate him from earthly love for ever. "Oh, Betty, you don't know what I suffered. I'd been saying to myself that when I saw him again--as I meant to--I would know by his eyes at the first glance whether he still cared as much as ever, and if he did, I would _ask_ him to marry me. But I never saw him again, except with the eyes of my heart; and I always see him so. Not an hour passes that I don't see him so." "You poor darling!" I exclaimed. And there was a note in her voice that made my eyelids sting. "How little I guessed. And you seem so cheerful and even merry." "One isn't in the world to be a wet blanket," said Sally. "Besides, one isn't actively miserable every minute, for years, because one has thrown away one's chance of real happiness. One gets along contentedly enough, except in the bad hours, when, instead of being a mild grey, the world is ink-black. But I haven't told you this to get sympathy, dear. It hasn't been quite easy telling, for I don't talk much about the deep-down things in myself. I've told you in the hope that you'll remember me, and my wasted years, if _your_ chance comes to be happy--even if it should be a chance which you think, in a worldly way, wouldn't be prudent, or what your people would like. People have no _right_ to try and order our lives, no matter how near they may be to us. It's we who have to live our lives, not they." For a minute we were both silent; and then Sally said quietly, as if she were glad to speak, "Here comes someone we've seen before. Do you recognise him? And shall you bow?" Vivace gave such a leap that his leash, which I'd been holding carelessly, was jerked out of my hand. It was my brown man who was coming--Jim Brett.