Through One Administration

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mrs. Sylvestre paused a moment.

"The experience I passed through," she said, "did not belong to my age. It was not a girl's feelings. I think it came too soon."

"You had two alternatives to choose from," said Bertha,—"that it should come too soon or too late."

Mrs. Sylvestre paused again.

"You do not think," she said, "that it ever comes to any one at the right time?"

Bertha had been sitting with her hands folded about her knee. She unclasped and clasped them with a sharply vehement movement.

"It is a false thing from beginning to end," she said. "I do not believe in it."

"Ah," said Mrs. Sylvestre, softly, "I believe it. I wish I did not."

"What is there to be gained by it?" said Bertha; "a feeling that is not to be reasoned about or controlled; a miserable, feverish emotion you cannot understand, and can only resent and struggle against blindly. When you let it conquer you, how can you respect yourself or the object of it? What do women love men for? Who knows? It is like madness! All you can say is, 'I love him. He is life or death to me.' It is so unreasoning—so unreasoning."