"Perhaps you don't know that a girl who makes a business of wearing scalps at her belt never stands a bit of a chance with a man she really loves, for she is afraid to practise on him the wiles which she knows from experience have been successful with scores of others, because she feels that he will see through them, and scorn her as she scorns herself in his presence. She loses her courage, she loses control of herself, and, being used to depend on 'business,' as actors say, to carry out her role successfully, she finds that she is only reading her lines, and reading them very badly too. If you could have seen me with Percival, you would know what I mean. I was dull, uninteresting, poky--no more the Sallie Cox that other men know than I am you. He absorbed my personality. I didn't care for myself or how I appeared. I only wanted him to shine and be his natural, brilliant self. I never could have helped him in his work. The most I could have hoped to do would have been not to hinder him. I would have been the gainer--it would have been the act of a home missionary for him to marry me." She laughed drearily. "Isn't it horribly immoral in me to sit here and talk in this way about a married man? It's a wonder it doesn't turn the color of the cushions. If you hear of my having the brougham relined, Ruth, you will know why. Ruth, I am so miserable at times it seems to me that I shall die. I'd love to cry this minute--cry just as hard as I could, and scream, and beat my head against something hard--how do you do, Mrs. Asbury?--but instead, I have to bow from the windows to people, and remember that I am supposed to be the complaisant bride-elect of the catch of the season. It is a judgment on me, Ruth, to find that I have a heart, when I have always gone on the principle that nobody had any. Yes--how-de-do, Miss Culpepper? excuse me a minute, Ruth, while I hate that girl. What has she done to me? Oh, nothing to speak of--she only had the bad taste to fall in love with the man I am going to marry. Writes him notes all the time, making love to him, which he promptly shows to me--oh, we are not very honorable, or very upright, or very anything good in the Osborne matrimonial arrangement. Anybody but you would hate me for all this I've told you, but I know you are pitying me with all your soul, because you know the empty-headed Sallie Cox carries with her a very sore heart, and that it will take more than Payson Osborne has got to give to heal it. I call him Pay sometimes, but he hates it. I only do it when I think how much he does pay for a very bad bargain. But he doesn't care, so why should I?