Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/94

 off one morning with a smile on his lips to meet the dawn. Steve had told her she had never permitted herself to be the woman God had created. He had told her that there was a hidden woman within her that she kept locked in prison. As she grew older, she had more time for remembrance. Long hours she pondered over this problem.

"I need not be so careful now," she murmured, "for the hidden woman must be growing old. Even if she breaks out of her prison she would perhaps be a feeble thing. Still the vigil must not be relaxed. Suppose she did find release and came shrieking into the sun, wailing for her lost youth."

She sighed. "It would be a frightful thing. It must not happen. I refuse to supply laughter for the gods. All my life I've been a puppet, but I have too much self-respect to end up by being a clown."

difficult accurately to describe the character of Louella Leota. She was a mixture of so many absurdities, so many contradictions. For one thing, there were periods when she visited fortune tellers two or three times a week. She would have her palm read, her future worked out from tea leaves, or spend hours with a crystal gazer.

Then abruptly she would change. She would declare that palmistry was a fraud. All prophets were charlatans. They ought to be run out of the country.

Again at times she was superstitious. She would not walk under a ladder. She shuddered if a black cat crossed her path. She was a believer in all the queer magic that people have believed in for ages.

Then abruptly she would lose faith. She'd laugh at black cats, smash mirrors for the fun of it and deliberately give parties where thirteen sat down together at the table.

Spiritualism, too, appealed to her in much the same manner.