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Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened
in the moonlight in the field, but felt that she
could never marry another man. To her the thought
of giving to another what she still felt could belong
only to Ned seemed monstrous. When other young
men tried to attract her attention she would have
nothing to do with them. "I am his wife and shall
remain his wife whether he comes back or not," she
whispered to herself, and for all of her willingness
to support herself could not have understood the
growing modern idea of a woman's owning herself
and giving and taking for her own ends in life.
Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight in
the morning until six at night and on three evenings
a week went back to the store to stay from seven
until nine. As time passed and she became more
and more lonely she began to practice the devices
common to lonely people. When at night she went
upstairs into her own room she knelt on the floor
to pray and in her prayers whispered things she
wanted to say to her lover. She became attached to
inanimate objects, and because it was her own,
could not bare to have anyone touch the furniture
of her room. The trick of saving money, begun for
a purpose, was carried on after the scheme of going
to the city to find Ned Currie had been given up. It
became a fixed habit, and when she needed new
clothes she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy
afternoons in the store she got out her bank book
and, letting it lie open before her, spent hours
dreaming impossible dreams of saving money enough
so that the interest would support both herself and
her future husband.
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