"If I loved a man, David,"--she continued, slowly, clasping her hands meditatively behind her back, and looking thoughtfully into the glowing centre of the fire--"I should love him so completely that I should never think of anything in which he had not the first and greatest share. I should see his kind looks in every ray of sunshine--I should hear his loving voice in every note of music,--if I were to read a book alone, I should wonder which sentence in it would please _him_ the most--if I plucked a flower, I should ask myself if he would like me to wear it,--I should live _through_ him and _for_ him--he would be my very eyes and heart and soul! The hours would seem empty without him----" She broke off with a little sob, and her eyes brimmed over with tears. "Why Mary! Mary, my dear!" murmured Helmsley, stretching out his hand to touch her--"Don't cry!" "I'm not crying, David!" and a rainbow smile lighted her face--"I'm only just--_feeling_! It's like when I read a little verse of poetry that is very sad and sweet, I get tears into my eyes--and when I talk about love--especially now that I shall never know what it is, something rises in my throat and chokes me----" "But you do know what it is,"--said Helmsley, powerfully moved by the touching simplicity of her confession of loneliness--"There isn't a more loving heart than yours in the world, I'm sure!" She came and knelt down again beside him. "Oh yes, I've a loving heart!" she said--"But that's just the worst of it! I can love, but no one loves or ever will love me--now. I'm past the age for it. No woman over thirty can expect to be loved by a lover, you know! Romance is all over--and one 'settles down,' as they say. I've never quite 'settled'--there's always something restless in me. You're such a dear old man, David, and so kind!--I can speak to you just as if you were my father--and I daresay you will not think it very wrong or selfish of me if I say I have longed to be loved sometimes! More than that, I've wished it had pleased God to send me a husband and children--I should have dearly liked to hold a baby in my arms, and soothe its little cries, and make it grow up to be happy and good, and a blessing to every one. Some women don't care for children--but I should have loved mine!" She paused a moment, and Helmsley took her hand, and silently pressed it in his own. "However,"--she went on, more lightly--"it's no good grieving over what cannot be helped. No man has ever really loved me--because, of course, the one I was engaged to wouldn't have thrown me over just because I was poor if he had cared very much about me. And I shall be thirty-five this year--so I must--I really _must_"--and she gave herself an admonitory little shake--"settle down! After all there are worse things in life than being an old maid. I don't mind it--it's only sometimes when I feel inclined to grizzle, that I think to myself what a lot of love I've got in my heart--all wasted!"