He had talked about his ideal, but he had not found it; he had his own ideal of womanhood, but he had not met with it.
"Are other women fairer, more lovable than I am ?" she asked herself.
"Why should another win where I have failed ?" So through the long hours of the starlit night she lamented the love and the wreck of her life, she mourned for the hope that could never live again, while her name was on the lips of men who praised her as the queen of beauty, and fair women envied her as one who had but to will and to win.
She would have given her whole fortune to win his love--not once, but a hundred times over.
It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she who had everything the world could give--beauty, health, wealth, fortune--should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her.
She watched the stars until they faded from the skies and then she buried her face in the pillow and sobbed herself to sleep..