world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few

years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of

womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama.

What capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities

of vileness, bitterness and evil. Nature must needs be lavish with the

mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of

life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full

of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple,

or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine.

There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising

much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any

special development of character.

But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and

that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the

power of fascination, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty.

She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be

very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of

passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little

object on which to discipline themselves.

The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul none of those

about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything

unusual or romantic or strange.

189

The Gilded Age