“Ezra, perhaps this terrible trial was needed to purify us all, to make us all more perfect communists. I can discern a valuable lesson that may be of profit to the brethren. I begin to think that after all marriage is selfish: perfect love alone is unselfish. You would not have kept Olive beside you by force, if her heart had gone from you, would you?”
“I thought our marriage was for life.”
“Yes, but she made a mistake as to her feelings; she found she loved someone else better. It was wise of her, after all, to break the bond. It would only have galled you both.”
“I should have been content if she had only let me love her,” said Ezra.
“Ah yes, I know that feeling but too well,” said Madame, bringing his mind with a shock to the thought that she never long allowed to sleep.
“It is a terrible world,” said Ezra beginning to realize what a spell she was weaving around him.
“It rests with ourselves to make it easier in the only way,” replied Madame.
Uncle David took up a firm position of his own and refused to listen to anybody or anything.
“I hain’t agoin’ to b’lieve nothin’ ’gin little Ollie,” he announced. “I don’t care ’bout proofs an’ things. Land! If I b’lieved in proofs there hain’t no sort o’ foolishness I shouldn’t be up to. I b’lieve in pussons.”
That was his position, and he stuck to it with unswerving fidelity. He was happy in his blind faith, and no one tried to shake it. The old man then began a strange sort of hunt after Olive. He would sit all day long at the forge, where, of course, strangers were most likely to pass, and to each he would put questions about the “little gal” he was so pathetically seeking. He spoke little, he who used to be so chatty, but sat hour after hour in silent patient expectation of the return of his loved one. The brethren began to think he must be losing his wits from sorrow, poor old man!