Page:The story of Mary MacLane (IA storyofmarymacla00macliala).pdf/151

 people, is now a thing that is quite unable to affect me.

The more I see of conventionality, it seems, the more I am odd.

Though I am young and feminine—very feminine—yet I am not that quaint conceit, a girl: the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about, and Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott,—girls with bright eyes, and with charming faces (they always have charming faces), standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet,—and all that sort of thing.

I missed all that.

I have read some girl-books, a few years ago—"Hildegarde Grahame," and "What Katy Did," and all,—but I read them from afar. I looked at those creatures from behind a high board fence. I felt as if I had more tastes in common with the Jews wandering through the wilderness, or with a band of fighting Amazons. I am not a girl. I am a woman, of a kind. I be-