Some days are like tin nutmeg-graters that everybody uses to grate you against, and this was one for me.  For an hour I sat and grated my own self against Alfred’s letter that had come in the morning.  I realised that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was going to do, for he wrote that he was coming in a week or two.

I like him and always have, of that I am sure.  He offers me the most wonderful life in the world, and no woman could help being proud to accept it.  I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess to Dr. John.  I can’t go on living like this any longer.  Ruth Clinton has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and—­quick.  I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her chance if I don’t want him.  The way she idolises and idealises him is a marvel of womanly stupidity.

Some women like to collect men’s hearts and hide them away from other women on cold storage, and the helpless things can’t help themselves.

I have contempt for that sort of a woman, and I love Ruth!

It’s my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in Alfred’s—­and decide.  If not Alfred, what then?

First—­no husband.  That’s out of the question!  I’m not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman’s suffrage.  I like men, can’t help it, and seem to need one for my own.

Second—­if not Alfred, who?  Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline’s own best friend, and they have ideas in common.

Still, living with him might have adventures.  I never saw such eyes!  The girl he wanted to marry died of turberculosis, and he wears a locket with her in it yet.  I’d like to reward him for such faithfulness.  But then Alfred’s been faithful too!  I look at Ruth Clinton and realise how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my breast—­my brain feels almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep the heart cold enough to manage, if I want anything left at all for him to come home to.

In some ways Tom Pollard is the most congenial man I ever knew.  I truly try to make him be serious about the important things in life, like going to church with his mother and working all day, even if he is rich.  I wish he wasn’t so near kin to me!  Now, there, I feel in Ruth Clinton’s way again!

I suppose I really would be doing the right thing to marry Mr. Graves, and I should adore all those children to start with, but I know Billy wouldn’t get on with them at all.  I can’t even consider it on his account, but I’ll let the nice old gentleman come for a few times more to see me, for he really is interesting, and we have suffered things in common.  Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did.  I’d like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn’t be happy, that settles it, and I don’t know how good his boys are.  I couldn’t have Billy corrupted.