LXII
As she went home she tried to recapture the magic of the flowering thorn-trees. But it had gone and she could not be persuaded that it would come again. She was still too young to draw joy from the memory of joy, and what Greatorex had told her seemed incredible.
She said to herself, "Is it going to be taken from me like everything else?"
And a dreadful duologue went on in her.
"It looks like it."
"But it was mine. It was mine like nothing else."
"It never had anything for you but what you gave it."
"Am I to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have anything for myself?"
"There never is anything for anybody but what they give. Or what they take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance."
"I'd have died, rather."
"Do you call this living?"
"I have lived."
"He hasn't. Why did you sacrifice him?"
"For Mary."
"It wasn't for Mary. It was for yourself. For your own wretched soul."
"For his soul."
"How much do you suppose Mary cares about his soul? It would have had a chance with you. Its one chance."
The unconsoling voice had the last word. For it was not in answer to it that a certain phrase came into her brooding mind.
"I couldn't do a caddish thing like that."
It puzzled her. She had said it to Steven that night. But it came to her now attached to an older memory. Somebody had said it to her before then. Years before.
She remembered. It was Ally.