"Why doesn't that girl marry?" she asked as they walked rapidly to the station. "Still fresh, if she is twenty-six. I'm only thirty-four and I look like a hag beside her." "Maybe she can't get the man she wants," replied the potential novelist, who was thinking deeply. CHAPTER XXII Alys borrowed a horse and cart from her cousin Mr. Phipps, Chief of Police in Elsinore, who kept a livery stable, and took the shortest cut into the country. She wanted to think out many things and think them out alone. She drove rapidly until she came within sight and sound of the sea. Then she let the lines lie loosely on the back of her old friend Colonel Roosevelt, who had been named in his fiery colt-hood, but in these days, save under compulsion, was as slow as American law. He ambled along, and Alys, in the booming stillness and the fresh salt air, felt the humid waves roll out of her brain. She saw clearly, but she was aghast and depressed. Presented by nature with an odd and arresting exterior, in color and feature as well as in subtlety of expression, sketched and flattered by such artists as she met, she had, ever since old enough for introspection, striven for uncommon personal developments that should justify her obverse and set her still farther apart from mere woman. If not born with an intense aversion from the commonplace (and it is safe to say that no one is), she had conceived it early enough to train a rarely plastic mind to striking viewpoints, while a natural tact saved her from isolation. If she had been as original as she thought herself, she would have antagonised many people. Assuredly a certain nobility of nature and a revulsion from all that was base were innate; although, soon learning of the many pitfalls yawning for humanity, she had assiduously cultivated these her higher inclinations, an enterprise measurably assisted by the equable temper, the feminine charm, the bright intelligence and the quick sympathies that made her many friends. Moreover, her freedom from the usual yearnings of her sex in the matter of riches and subservience to the race, which wreck the lives of so many women, and her love of the arts and delight in her own little talent, all served to deponderate the burden of life.