talk about it. If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love

and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a

transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so

calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself.

Whatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they

are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and

carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to

bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a

self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining,

have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all

literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It

is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle and

implacable.

Do you think you would be contented to live in Fallkill, and attend the

county Court?" asked Alice, when Philip had opened the budget of his new

programme.

"Perhaps not always," said Philip, "I might go and practice in Boston

maybe, or go to Chicago."

"Or you might get elected to Congress."

Philip looked at Alice to see if she was in earnest and not chaffing him.

Her face was quite sober. Alice was one of those patriotic women in the

539

The Gilded Age