For this reason fate had been hard to her--because she had never yielded to pressure--because she had stepped by habit rather than choice into the vacant place.

She was a good woman--her heart assured her of this--she had done her duty no matter what it cost her--and she had possessed, moreover, a fund of common sense which had aided her not a little in doing it.

It was this common sense that told her now that facts were, after all, more important than dreams--that the putting up of pickles was a more useful work in the world than the regretting of possibilities--that the sordid realities were not less closely woven into the structure of existence than were the romantic illusions.

She told herself these things, yet in spite of her words she saw her future stretching away, like her past, amid a multitude of small duties for which she had neither inclination nor talent.

One thing after another, all just alike, day after day, month after month, year after year.
Nothing ahead of her, and, looking back, nothing behind her that she would care to stop and remember.