“You appreciate, I can not doubt, the qualities in woman which men value in one another—­culture, independence of thought, a high and earnest apprehension of life; but you know not how to seek them.  It is not true that a mature and unperverted woman is flattered by receiving only the general obsequiousness which most men give to the whole sex.  In the man who contradicts and strives with her, she discovers a truer interest, a nobler respect.  The empty-headed, spindle-shanked youths who dance admirably, understand something of billiards, much less of horses, and still less of navigation, soon grow inexpressibly wearisome to us; but the men who adopt their social courtesy, never seeking to arouse, uplift, instruct us, are a bitter disappointment.

“What would have been the end, had you really found me?  Certainly a sincere, satisfying friendship.  No mysterious magnetic force has drawn you to me or held you near me, nor has my experiment inspired me with an interest which can not be given up without a personal pang.  I am grieved, for the sake of all men and all women.  Yet, understand me!  I mean no slightest reproach.  I esteem and honor you for what you are.  Farewell!”

There!  Nothing could be kinder in tone, nothing more humiliating in substance.  I was sore and offended for a few days; but I soon began to see, and ever more and more clearly, that she was wholly right.  I was sure, also, that any further attempt to correspond with her would be vain.  It all comes of taking society just as we find it, and supposing that conventional courtesy is the only safe ground on which men and women can meet.

The fact is—­there’s no use in hiding it from myself (and I see, by your face, that the letter cuts deep into you own conscience)—­she is a free, courageous, independent character, and—­I am not.

But who was she?

MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
----------------------------
BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (born at Portsmouth, N. H., Nov. n, 1836) is an artist to his finger tips, whether working in verse or prose.  His short story of a non-existent heroine, “Marjorie Daw” has been repeatedly mentioned by the critics as a masterpiece of dainty workmanship.  Consequently most readers are familiar with it.  It gave title to a volume of short stories, one of which, the present selection, hardly deserved to be thrust in this manner into the background.  Its denouement is fully as ingenious and unexpected as that of “Marjorie Daw,” and it is led up to with an art that is just as illusory.  The reader, too, is relieved at the final shattering of the romance, where, in the same case with “Marjorie Daw,” he can hardly bring himself to forgive the author.

MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
[Footnote:  Copyright, 1873 and 1901, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
Published by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
publishers of Mr. Aldrich’s works.]