"Yes— I understand, lamb," said Sue softly.
Sophy went on, her eyes still fixed on the white satin scroll.
"You know, Sue ... it's said that when one dies and wakes up in quite another state, one doesn't realise that one has died just at first. Well ... I feel something like that. I've come into a queer, new state of being. I can't seem to realise myself or anything just yet."
"Yes, dear," said her cousin, fitting the shoe into a corner of the trunk, and coming back to sit down near her. Sophy reached out one hand mechanically, and Sue took it in both her own, with quiet, matter-of-fact affection. Sophy still gazed before her, seeing nothing.
"It's a queer thing to say, Sue," she continued after a moment, "but I don't think I've lived at all yet ... not really."
This did seem odd to Miss Pickett, but she thought it due to a certain inevitable old-maidishness on her part, and gave no sign.
"I'll try to explain what I mean," said Sophy. "I've loved love all my life. But love isn't given us just to love ... the love between two people—a man and a woman ... is only one tiny part of love. Yes...." She knitted her straight brows trying to bring her thought to clearness for the other. "That kind of love—if it tries to be an end in itself has to die ... to wither away. Or, if it does last, then the soul withers."
She smiled suddenly, turning her eyes on her cousin.
"I think the Serpent was really kinder to Adam and Eve, when he got them turned out of Eden, than Jehovah was when he shut them up in it," she said.
"How's that?" asked Miss Pickett, startled, for she was rather orthodox in her views on religious form, though her big heart made her more unconventional in practise.