Annesley felt again the man's intense magnetism. Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything. It would be a relief. She would watch his face and see how it changed. It would be like having the verdict of the world on what she had done--or meant to do. "I saw an advertisement in the _Morning Post_," she said with a kind of breathless violence, "from a man who--who wanted to meet a girl with--a 'view to marriage.'" The words brought a blush so painful that the mounting blood forced tears to her eyes. But she looked her _vis-a-vis_ unwaveringly in the face. That did not change at all, unless the interest in his eyes grew warmer. The sympathy she saw there gave Annesley a new and passionate desire to defend herself. If he had shown disgust, she would not have cared to try, she thought. "I told you it was horrid, and not interesting or romantic," she dashed on. "But I was desperate. Mrs. Ellsworth is awful! I don't suppose you ever met such a woman. She's not cruel about starving my body. It's only my soul she starves. What business have _I_ with a soul, except in church, where it's proper to think about such things? But she nags--_nags_! She makes my hair feel as if it were turning gray at the roots, and my face drying up--like an apple. "I wasn't nineteen when I came to her. I'm twenty-three now, and I feel _old_--desiccated, thanks to those piling-up hundreds of days with her. They've killed my spirit. I used to be different. I can feel it. I can see it in the mirror. It isn't only the passing days, but having nothing better to look forward to. I'm too cowardly--or too religious or something, to kill myself, even if I knew how to, decently. But the deadliness of it all, the airlessness of her house and her heart! "A man couldn't imagine it. She's made me forget not only my own youth, but that there's youth in the world. Why, at first I was so wild I should have loved to say dreadful things, or strike her. But now I haven't the spirit left to feel like that. My blood's turning white. The other day when I was reading aloud to Mrs. Ellsworth (I read a lot: the stupidest parts of the papers and the silliest books, that turn my brain to fluff) I caught sight of an advertisement in the Personal Column. "I stopped just in time and didn't read it out. Only a glimpse I had, for I was in the midst of something else when my eyes wandered. But when Mrs. Ellsworth was taking her nap after luncheon I got the _Post_ again and read the advertisement through carefully. The reason I was interested was because even the glance I took showed that the girl who was 'wanted' seemed in some ways rather like me. The advertisement said she must be from twenty-one to twenty-six; needn't be a beauty, but of pleasant appearance; money no object; the essentials were that she must have a fair education and be of good birth and manners, so as to command a certain position in society.