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. It was now I they offered twenty horses when I could ride only one. It was for me they waited at street corners. And it was what I said and did that they talked of. Partly I liked it. I had lived alone all my life. No one ever had told me I was beautiful, but now they did. I believed them. I did not know it was simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed without thought. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I hated them. I was still young. I did not know all men were my children, as the older woman knows when she learns about the world.
