“Oh, I am not a monster, I am not abnormal, I am merely a result. It began—when did it begin? I was a child when I came here—I remember little that happened before—it has always been the _rôle_ of the poor cousin, I remember no other—no other! never! never! I had to learn patience at an age when other children are clamouring for their little desires. I had to learn humility when other children—while I watched my cousins take all the goods and joys of childhood as their divine right. While their little world was at their feet I was learning to cringe and watch and wait and smile upon people I hated, and listen to people that bored me to death, and suffer vicariously for all the shortcomings of the Peele family when my aunt was in one of her cold rages. It was early that I learned the lesson that if I would occupy a supportable position in life I must ‘work’ people; I must cultivate will and tact—how I hate the loathsome word—and study the natures of those about me, and play upon them; that I must acquire absolute self repression, be a sort of automaton, that, being once wound up properly, never makes a false move. I believe that was one thing which drove me to the Catholic Church,—the unspeakable relief that I should find in confession,—that and one other thing—” She paused abruptly, and pressed her hands to her face, to which the blood had sprung. “I loved Beverly Peele,” she continued violently. “I do not know when it began; when I was old enough to fall in love, I suppose, and that is young enough with a woman. When we were children we used to play at being married. Even after he was grown and was rather wild, he used to come back to me in the summer time and tell me that he cared for no one else. I knew all his faults, his weaknesses, his limitations, mental and moral and spiritual,—none better. But I loved him. I worshipped him. He was not even a companion to me, for I was always intellectually ambitious. Not a taste but music did we have in common. I have seen him in raging tempers that would make any other woman despise him—when he seemed an animal, a savage. But nothing made any difference to me. A woman loves or she does not love—that is the beginning and the end. There is no more relation between cause and effect in an infatuated woman’s mind than—Oh, well, I can’t be finding similes.