VIRGINIA

By ELLEN GLASGOW

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMXIII

Copyright, 1913, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into Foreign Languages, including the Scandinavian.

TO
THE RADIANT SPIRIT
WHO WAS
MY
SISTER
CARY GLASGOW
MC CORMACK

VIRGINIA

CONTENTS

BOOK FIRST—THE DREAM

CHAPTER I. The System
CHAPTER II. Her Inheritance
CHAPTER III. First Love
CHAPTER IV. The Treadwells
CHAPTER V. Oliver, the Romantic
CHAPTER VI. A Treadwell in Revolt
CHAPTER VII. The Artist in Philistia
CHAPTER VIII. White Magic
CHAPTER IX. The Great Man Moves
CHAPTER X. Oliver Surrenders

BOOK SECOND—THE REALITY

CHAPTER I. Virginia Prepares for the Future
CHAPTER II. Virginia's Letters
CHAPTER III. The Return
CHAPTER IV. Her Children
CHAPTER V. Failure
CHAPTER VI. The Shadow
CHAPTER VII. The Will to Live
CHAPTER VIII. The Pang of Motherhood
CHAPTER IX. The Problem of the South

BOOK THIRD—THE ADJUSTMENT

CHAPTER I. The Changing Order
CHAPTER II. The Price of Comfort
CHAPTER III. Middle-age
CHAPTER IV. Life's Cruelties
CHAPTER V. Bitterness
CHAPTER VI. The Future

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

BOOK FIRST

THE DREAM

CHAPTER I

THE SYSTEM

Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning to blow in soft gusts under the old mulberry trees in the street, and to scatter the loosened petals of syringa blossoms in a flowery snow over the grass. For a moment Miss Priscilla turned her flushed face to the scented air, while her eyes rested lovingly on the narrow walk, edged with pointed bricks and bordered by cowslips and wallflowers, which led through the short garden to the three stone steps and the tall iron gate. She was a shapeless yet majestic woman of some fifty years, with a large mottled face in which a steadfast expression of gentle obstinacy appeared to underly the more evanescent ripples of thought or of emotion. Her severe black silk gown, to which she had just changed from her morning dress of alpaca, was softened under her full double chin by a knot of lace and a cameo brooch bearing the helmeted profile of Pallas Athene. On her head she wore a three-cornered cap trimmed with a ruching of organdie, and beneath it her thin gray hair still showed a gleam of faded yellow in the sunlight. She had never been handsome, but her prodigious size had endowed her with an impressiveness which had passed in her youth, and among an indulgent people, for beauty. Only in the last few years had her fleshiness, due to rich food which she could not resist and to lack of exercise