“That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.  I was conscientious about it tried—­tried to make every garden better than the last.  But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone, and by degrees the handicap of my sex was brought home to me.  I did not feel the pressure at first, and then—­I am ashamed to say—­it had in it an element of excitement, a sense of power.  The poison was at work.  I was amused.  I thought I could carry it through, that the world had advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the courage.  And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others . . . .

“As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner.  It seemed to madden some men—­and the disillusionments began to come.  Of course it was my fault —­I don’t pretend to say it wasn’t.  There were many whom, instinctively, I was on my guard against, but some I thought really nice, whom I trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected.  That was the terrible thing!  And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was. . . "

Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.

“It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know.  At last I met a man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York, achieving a reputation as a lawyer.  Shall I tell you that I fell in love with him?  He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was beginning to feel the staleness of it.  Not that I surrendered at once, but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually disappeared—­or rather I ignored them.  He had charm, a magnificent self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed, in regard to women, most appealed to me.  I was weak on that side, and I have often wondered whether he knew it.  I believed him incapable of a great refusal.

“He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom —­freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.  Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.  One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two before the wedding . . . .  The manner in which he said it suddenly turned me cold.  Oh,” Alison exclaimed, “I was quite willing to go back, to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but—­how can I tell you?—­he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my father’s money . . . .

“I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to stone.  And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went out. . .  Three months later he came back and said that I had misunderstood him, that he couldn’t live without me.  I sent him away....  Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends . . . .