Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/92

 invested every Sunday was a form of advertising. It caused men to notice her. A friendly nod, a handclasp. Later a visit.

Louella lost her taste in clothes as the years rolled on. As she grew stouter she dressed coyly. She leaned toward flounces, ruffles and gaudy colors. She was one of the first to help popularize cosmetics just as she had helped to popularize other things.

Louella had no regrets because of her past life. It had been full. She had had much excitement and for the most part she had been master of her own fate. Regrettably, it cannot be stated she ever showed remorse. Nature made men desire certain things and she merely helped out nature by supplying those certain things which men desired.

There were times, however, when she used to speculate on what her life might have been if she had never eloped from her father's farm with Whitman Manners. This life she had lived was not the one that had been intended for her. Louella Leota, who never had been born, had lived most of the life of Mary Blaine. Mary Blaine, too, was living an artificial life, at least she had lived it on those rare occasions when Louella faded into the background for the time being. Certainly that interlude when she had been a farm drudge for Yekial Meigs had been no more her true life than the tinsel existence of Louella.

With the years Louella became a little mellow. She had led an active life. She was rather tired. She liked to rest. Besides, now and then she' had trouble with her heart. The doctor told her that while there was no immediate danger, she must live quietly and take things easy. Louella could not help smiling. Such a simple remedy apparently and yet she refused to take it. "If I had to live quietly," she said, "I'd die. So it is up to me to make a decision, to decide whether I wish to succumb to the disease or the cure."

Louella did not die despite the fact that she did not heed the doctor's admonition.

"Doctors at best," she reflected, "are nuisances. Unless a person is very sick he does not need a doctor; and if he is really sick he cannot risk experimenting with one. Doctors should be paid to keep people well, just as they are paid in China. I'd even carry