forty years in an upper chamber pallidly worshiping their penitence and their memory of betrayal. Dorinda has the blood of Scotch-Irish ancestors in her veins. She packs up her wedding clothes. She packs away her dreams. With her young sense unimpaired that life is "precious and indescribably sad and lovely," she stiffens her soft lip and fights for a life which shall be independent of the admiration of men, fights for a successful life, as men rate success, and wins it—incidentally acquiring a husband whom she treats as a superior hired man. As her hands are very full with the management of her three large farms and dairy, he is quite useful to her.
Men who are realistic enough to admit that they could live without their wives but not without their work are likely to see in Dorinda a fine sort of heroine. Others will say: "But what did she get out of it—with her cows and her married hired man?" And I think Miss Glasgow would reply: "Romance! The fighting edge. She saved her soul, as modern women understand the soul. She made herself a character. She learned that in the end 'nothing lasts but courage.'"
