"My mistakes have been very final for me, Sue. I've laid all my frankincense and myrrh on the altar of Anteros, I've nothing to offer the true god. But there's my son ... my defeat shall make his victory. There shall be one man in the world who knows the true god from the false. Some woman shall be glad through my pain. Some day, when a woman loves my Bobby, she shall be able to say: 'This is my beloved and this is my friend!'"
Sue glanced quickly at her, but her expression was wholly unconscious. She was not thinking of Amaldi in that moment. She was only thinking that love to be real, to be perfect, to be lasting must include friendship, comradeship, understanding, mutual endeavour. That to retain its fulness it must give out to others besides the one, give incessantly, untiringly, without stint, without grudging. That instead of raising magic walls of enclosure, it should level all barriers.
She took another tone suddenly.
Colour came into her face. She looked with darkened eyes at her cousin.
"Sue...." she said. "The fact is that all these years I've been nothing but a miserable happiness-hunter!"
"Nonsense!" said Miss Pickett.
"Just that ... a happiness-hunter," repeated Sophy.
"Well ... and what is everybody else doing but hunting happiness, I'd like to know?" retorted her cousin. "Even the martyrs were after it! If they hadn't found happiness in martyrdom they wouldn't have sought it, you may be sure. Don't be morbid, child, for goodness' sake!"
"I'm not morbid. And what you say is true in a way. But there is selfish happiness and unselfish happiness, and what I've wanted was the selfish kind. I wanted love all to myself. What do I know of life really?... What do I know of what's going on in the real world?... Oh, 'it is good for me that I have been afflicted!' It is something, at least, that I can say that from my soul—with all my might. It is good ... it is good for me.... I'm glad the Serpent has come into Eden.... I'm glad that I've eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil!... Now I'm going out into the wilderness of life, and I'm going to learn how to live. I'm just born, but I'm going to 'put aside childish things' ... that toy called happiness, with all the rest!"
Miss Pickett gazed at the ardent face, with affection. Then she smiled wisely.