I went to my answer like an arrow to its mark.  “I am having the most wonderful time in the world,” I cried; “I have settled with man.”

My father put back his head and shouted.  He thought it was a fine joke.  He laughed about it long after my party was over.  He thought my head was turned.  He laughed about it long after other people had stopped wondering why Gordon went away.

I never told any one why Gordon went away.  I might under certain circumstances have told a girl, but it was not the sort of thing one could have told one’s mother.  This is the first time I have ever told the story of Dolly Leonard’s death and my debutante party.

Dolly Leonard left a little son behind her—­a joyous, rollicking little son.  His name is Paul Yardley.  We girls were pleased with the initials—­P.Y.  They stand to us for “Perfect Year.”

Dolly Leonard’s husband has married again, and his wife has borne him safely three daughters and a son.  Each one of my six girl chums is the mother of a family.  Now and again in my experience some woman has shirked a duty.  But I have never yet met a woman who dared to shirk a happiness.  Duties repeat themselves.  There is no duplicate of happiness.

I am fifty-eight years old.  I have never married.  I do not say whether I am glad or sorry.  I only know that I have never had a Perfect Year.  I only know that I have never been warm since the night that Dolly Leonard died.

Editha

BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

The air was thick with the war I feeling, like the electricity of a storm which has not yet burst.  Editha sat looking out into the hot spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity of the question whether she could let him go.  She had decided that she could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still leafless avenue, making slowly up toward the house, with his head down, and his figure relaxed.  She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with her will before she called aloud to him, “George!”

He had quickened his pace in mystical response to her mystical urgence, before he could have heard her; now he looked up and answered, “Well?”

“Oh, how united we are!” she exulted, and then she swooped down the steps to him.  “What is it?” she cried.

“It’s war,” he said, and he pulled her up to him, and kissed her.

She kissed him back intensely, but irrelevantly, as to their passion, and uttered from deep in her throat, “How glorious!”