Well, what does it matter to me? I have just met a woman who stared at
me, and spoke as if she thought I were a lunatic to be afield in this
array. What does anything matter? Sometimes, when I am with people who
see straight, I do take a certain pleasure in looking well, because I
am a woman, and nothing can quite take away that pleasure from me; but
all the time I know it does not matter, that nothing has really
mattered since I was about Peggy's age and Lyman Wilde quarrelled with
me over nothing and vanished into thin air, so far as I was concerned.
I suppose he is comfortably settled with a wife and family somewhere.
It is rather odd, though, that with all my wandering on this side of
the water and the other I have never once crossed his tracks. He may be
in the Far East, with a harem. I never have been in the Far East. Well,
it does not matter to me where he is. That is ancient history. On the
whole, though, I like the harem idea better than the single wife. I
have what is left to me--the little things of life, the pretty effects
which go to make me pretty (outside Eastridge); the comforts of
civilization, travelling and seeing beautiful things, also seeing ugly
things to enhance the beautiful. I have pleasant days in beautiful
Florence. I have friends. I have everything except--well, except
everything.
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