Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/225

 To-morrow

HE Necklace which God long ago hung round the white neck of my Soul is composed of little-seeming curses, like precious and semi-precious gems. They are polished smooth as if by age, as if by wear, as if by fingering and as if by brisk industrious rubbing.

The Necklace is at once beautiful and ugly. The gems are in color chiefly blues and greens—with grays, lavenders, drabs and mauves. But mostly blues and greens. They make a circlet of small stones strung at short intervals as if on a strong thin gold wire, with two large tawdry pretty pendants hung in front. One of the pendants is my fertile phase of Weakness and the other my odd encompassing Folly. The smaller stones are seventeen in number and their names and natures are these:

the first is Dishonesty which makes ghosts of half my life.

the second is Pretense, hard and genuine stone, which keeps me from being all-ways sincere even to anyone who knows me and whom I know: who loves me and whom I love.

the third is Fear which makes me who scorn all leonine dangers cringe and crawl for Trifles of life