CHAPTER XIX
AND it might not have been impossible for Reba to have carried her secret concealed to her grave if her path had continued simple and straight and undeviating. There are plenty of women who succeed in keeping their mistakes hidden in the dark deep recesses of their souls, with the world never the wiser. Nathaniel Cawthorne was not the kind of man to insist upon legal claims, and Reba's life in the city was not one that offered complications as far as her marriage was concerned. She was surrounded by women on all sides—lived, worked and played with them. Her activities as an Alliance secretary (for such she became at last) thrust before her few opportunities for meeting men on a social basis, and she shrank now from seeking opportunities. That, however, was no great hardship for Reba. As much as she still deplored the meagerness of her knowledge of the opposite sex, it was a relief to her that she possessed so justifiable an excuse for avoiding men as her marriage.
It was during her second autumn in the city that Reba was offered a position at the Women's Alliance. She did not seek it. It had never occurred to Reba that she possessed qualities useful to an organization like the Women's Alliance. She drifted into her officialdom. But it was none the less precious to her. No secretly ambitious man ever drifted into a high
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