mother who had been so disappointed that she was not a boy — or at least, a pretty girl.

Valancy reviewed her whole life between midnight and the early spring dawn. It was a very drab existence, but here and there an incident loomed out with a significance out of all proportion to its real importance. These incidents were all unpleasant in one way or another. Nothing really pleasant had every happened to Valancy.

“I’ve never had one wholly happy hour in my life — not one,” she thought. “I’ve just been a colourless nonentity. I remember reading somewhere once that there is an hour in which a woman might be happy all her life if she could but find it. I’ve never found my hour — never, never. And I never will now. If I could only have had that hour I’d