The Romantic Ruin of a Seattle Dreamer

She had never known what it was to be in love, or even herself in such a blissful state, and yet she was over twenty. She had listened when other girls had poured out their heart secrets, and she had wondered vaguely why she had no tender confidences to make in return. She was a queer sort of girl, and lived among people who did not understand her; thorough bohemian by nature, she was cast among the most Christians. She lived among them but her thoughts were not with them; she led an idle life. One day she thought she could lay down her life to write a book equal to George Eliot; but the next, her one ambition was to paint a picture, something before which the cold critics would bow down and weep. Another day, after seeing some fine piece of acting, she would feel an inner conviction that in pacing the planks she would find her true sphere in life. There were glorious capabilities in her nature, and yet she accomplished nothing. At last one day, after investing in reams of paper, she began her great novel. Three whole chapters she accomplished in one morning, and then she got stuck. It was time the hero should appear, and she could not make a hero. It was at this crisis that she went on a picnic, and met Howard Graham. She had heard of this man as a cold and calculating villain, and she wanted a villain for her story; it was for that reason that she sought him. How little she thought then that before the band played 'Home, Sweet Home,' that instead of being the villain of her story he had become the hero of her life. She did not try to overcome this passion, because she knew the object was unworthy, yet it seemed impossible to resist him. The worn-out simile of the bird charmed by the snake applied to them; for two months she was happy, wildly happy. He was tender and plausible, yet she never believed for an instant that the fancy he had for her was enduring. Those that had known her in the old days as only a silent dreamy girl, were surprised by the scintillations of her wit; she wrote as one inspired; this love seemed to have given her the very stimulus that she needed. The end came at last. One afternoon he kissed her good-bye, told her not to flirt, to be a good girl and then he would see her next week. She was very good; she didn't flirt, neither did she see him. The painful consciousness that she was 'shaken' was borne in upon her. There isn't any moral to this, but one can't help crying out when a fair, bright life is ruined. Neither can one help desiring to see the man who wrought the ruin dancing on nothing, otherwise expiating his crime by pendulous suffocation.