There was something noble and even heroic in this devotion of men to the best woman they knew. There was also something natural in it, that these men, shut off from the world, should give to one woman the worship that otherwise they would have given to twenty. And there was also something mean in their envy of one another. If she had raised her little finger, I suppose, she might have married any one of them.
Then I came. I do not think I was prettier. I certainly do not think I was as pretty as she was. But I was new, and she was old -- they all left her and followed me. They worshiped me. It was to my door they sent their flowers.
