I’ve observed that every woman in her effort to prove herself “not like other girls” pretends to some occult or other equally supranatural quality. One dreams dreams. Another gets spirit messages. A third has seen ghosts. Another has a foot which sculptors have longed to model. A fifth has a note in her voice which the throat specialists pronounce unique in the human animal and occurring only in certain rare birds and Sarah Bernhardt. I met one not long ago who had several too many or too few skins, I forget which, and as a result was endowed with I cannot recall what nervous qualities quite peculiar to herself, and somehow most valuable and fascinating. In that early stage of her career my Edna was “hipped” upon a rather commonplace personal characteristic--the notion that she had premonitions, was a sort of seeress or prophetess. Later she dropped it for one less tiresome and overworked. But I recall that even in that time of my deepest infatuation I wished to hear as little as possible about the occult. Of all the shallow, foggy fakes that attract ignorant and miseducated people the occult is the most inexcusable and boring. A great many people, otherwise apparently rather sensible, seem honestly to believe in it. But, being sensible, they don’t have anything to do with it. They treat it as practical men treat the idiotic in the creeds and the impossible in the moral codes of the churches to which they belong--that is, they assent and proceed to dismiss and to forget. However, I was not much impressed by Edna’s attempt to dazzle me with her skill as a Sibyl. But I was deeply impressed by the awe-inspiring softness and shapeliness of her hand lying prisoner in mine. And I was moved to the uttermost by the kisses and embraces we exchanged in the gathering dusk. “I love you,” she murmured into my ecstatic ear. “You are so different from the other men round here.” I dilated with pride. “So far ahead of them in every way.” “Ahead of Charley Putney?” said I, jocose but jealous withal. She laughed with a delightful look of contemptuous scorn in her cute face. “Oh, _he_!” she scoffed. “He’s getting only eight a week, and he’ll never get any more.” “Not if his boss has sense,” said I, thinking myself judicial. “But let’s talk about ourselves. We can be married now.” I advanced this timidly, for being a truly-in-love lover I was a little afraid of her, a little uncertain of this priceless treasure. But she answered promptly, “Yes, I was thinking of that.” “Let’s do it right away,” proposed I. “Oh, not for several weeks. It wouldn’t be proper.” “Why not?” She couldn’t explain. She only knew that there was something indecent about haste in such matters, that the procedure must be slow and orderly and stately. “We’ll marry the first of next month,” she finally decided, and I joyfully acquiesced.