pleasure in life if she lost him, was unimaginable to her at the
instant. She loved him, she had loved him from the first moment she saw
him, she would never, though she lived a million years, love any one
else. It was as absurd to think that she could love again as that a
flower could bloom afresh when its petals were withered. No, without
George there was only loveless old age--there was only the future of
Miss Amelia before her. And she clung to this idea with a horror which
Miss Amelia, who seldom reflected that she was loveless and by no means
considered herself an object of pity, would have despised.

"I have no right to marry George, and yet if I don't marry him I shall
be miserable all my life," she told herself with a sensation of panic.
It would be so long, the rest of her life, and without George it was as
desolate as the gray road of her vision. All the beauties of the
universe, all the miracles of hope, of youth, of spring; her health, her
intellect, her capacity for work and for taking pleasure in little
things--all these were as nothing to her if she lost George out of her
life. "I oughtn't to marry him," she repeated, "but if I don't marry him
I shall be miserable every minute until I die."

Then a terror more awful than any she had yet suffered clutched at her
heart. Suppose he should never come back! Suppose he had really meant to
leave her for good! Suppose he had ceased to love her since he went out
of the house! The possibility was so agonizing that she rose blindly
from her chair and turned from the window as if the quiet street, filled
with the dreamy sunshine of October, had offered an appalling, an
unbelievable sight to her eyes. If he had ceased to love her, she was
helpless; and this sense of helplessness awoke a feeling of rage in her
heart. If he did not come back, she could never go after him. She could
only sit and wait until she grew as old and as ugly as Miss Amelia.
While the minutes, which seemed hours, dragged away, she wept the
bitterest tears o

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

Anonymous may refer to: Anonymus, the Latin spelling, may refer to: