position he could give her. He would always hold himself at an elevation far above her parents, and this would always be a sting in her soul, but she was too ambitious to hesitate at this. One day he stopped at the shop to buy a shaving mug, and she waited on him. They became acquainted. She was fascinated with his beauty and fine clothes and polite manners. He made love to her from that day with ardor, and she was in the heaven of glory she had dreamed of as she attended to the shop. One day he proposed to her, and she gladly accepted his offer. Her ambition was to be gratified. Oh, the fascination and the wild ambition and magnificent hopes! But all the time she knew she did not love him with a sincere heart. Her humble origin, and his proud and aristocratic parents, made a chasm that could not be bridged in so short a time. Her parents thought it a fine bargain and sale, and encouraged the courtship. Love would come later on. A woman must learn to love where love pays the largest dividends in gold. So the beautiful, ambitious Irish girl and the aristocratic youth were quietly married. When he told his proud mother that he had married the girl from the crockery store, the last happy smile died on her lips, and she never smiled again. She had such high ambitions for her boy, and he had spoiled them by a rash marriage. Is it any wonder the marriage proved a failure? They had six children, yet the mother never loved her husband as a woman should love the father of her babies. She was ever conscious of the social chasm between them, and it was a thorn that never ceased to give pain. She had reached the place her ambition craved, but it did not reward her with happiness. There was more pleasure in slowly falling from it, than trying to go higher. The home and money and position were not satisfying. Her popular young husband and the social distinction he gave her were not satisfying. She was not happy. She filled the aching void with lovers. One was a society man in her husband’s set, and one other was a big, dark, much-married actor. She broke her husband’s heart, she broke the heart of his adoring mother, and she grew more wretched herself every year. She then took to drink, and soon after to drugs. Coming home one night from a party she fell on the icy pavement and broke both lower limbs. She never saw a well day after the accident, and died at the age of thirty-four. She had starved her heart for wealth and position. She went without love to a high position and found it a bitter mockery. She had outraged her own soul. Then began the work of turning to ruin the palace in which she tried to live without love. THE SOLDIER’S DIARY