Kitty's mother had been dead only a year when Aunt Matilda, who had adopted me several years earlier on the death of my parents, married her father. I was twelve and Kitty eight when the marriage took place, and with canny care I tried to shield her from the severity of Aunt Matilda's system in rearing a child. I had been reared by it. I owe much to Aunt Matilda. She sent me to good schools, to a good college; took me with her on most of her trips abroad, and at twenty presented me to society, but she never knew me, never in the least understood the hunger in my heart for what it was not in her power to give. I never told her there was hunger in my heart. I rarely told her of anything she could not see for herself. In childhood I had learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, too, she failed to understand. That I would not marry as she wished was a grievous blow to her. I had no desire to marry, and it was when refusing to do so that certain realizations came to me sharply, and all the more acutely, because I had so long been seemingly indifferent to them. On the morning following the night in which I had faced frankly undeniable facts I went to Aunt Matilda's room and told her I could no longer be dependent, told her of my purpose to earn my own living. I was strong, healthy, well educated. There was no reason why I should not do what other women were doing. As I talked her amazement and indignation deepened into anger, and had I been a child I "would undoubtedly have been punished for my impertinence and audacity in daring to desire to go out into the world to earn what there was no necessity for my earning. Socially, a woman could be autocratic, I was told, but in all things else she should be dependent on the stronger sex. "But there is no stronger-sex person for me to be dependent upon, even were I willing to depend," I said, and made effort to keep back what I must not say to her, but surely would have said to others. For years I had been the recipient of her bounty, the object of her care, and she still thought of me as something to be protected. That I should prefer to work, prefer to take my place in the world of women-workers, was beyond her grasp. "Mr. Chesmond understood when I married him--it is part of our marriage contract--that you were to have the same advantages as his daughter. He has very willingly given you these. If you no longer care to accept his protection, you can marry. Opportunities such as come to few girls have come to you. A home of your own is yours for the taking. In my day--"