“It is that that is hard and pitiless—to think of one’s truth more than of another’s pain.”
“You always say the right thing,” Felicia answered gravely; she could but recognize the other’s seeming right; there was no irony in the words.
“I have come to you with love,” said Angela, controlling an anger that made her voice tremble slightly, “and you have rejected me. I have given you my best. But sincerity and love shrivel before such cruel scepticism as yours. I am sad, sad for you, because to the sceptic all life must turn to ashes. You are the spirit that denies: I don’t distrust my own flowers because when you look at them they die. I am sorry for you. You live in a world where I cannot breathe. Good-bye.”
She had turned away, thrilling with her spiritual splendour. From apparent failure she sprang to triumph. And, with a final flashing vision of a Pilgrim’s Chorus marching past Venusburg to a kingdom of the sky, she added, resting eyes of saintly solemnity on her antagonist: “God bless you.”
She was gone; and not moving, not looking at Geoffrey, Felicia said, “I have been horrible. I could not help it.”
“You are all right,” said Geoffrey, coming from the window, “you seemed pretty horrible, and that gave her one of the best times of her life. You positively buckled the wings on her shoulders. But she knows you’re right, and she won’t forgive you for it, either.”
“To have a person who hates you say ‘God bless you’—it frightens me.”
“Nonsense. It was an ugly missile, I own; but it’s the worst she can shy at you. Now come and play for me,” said Geoffrey.
CHAPTER VI
ANGELA walked away breathing quickly. Her exaltation still floated her above her anger, but through the anger and through the exaltation a deep sense of injury and humiliation rose again and again, bringing tears to her eyes. And under what circumstances had Felicia rejected her outstretched hand, striking down its patient pitifulness? The suspicions of her first entrance into the room gathered around her, cloaked her warmly; there was a shiver in that sense of humiliation. Exaltation, too, was a cold thing if one suspected that others did not see one as exalted. Angela hardly knew that the hot currents of feeling that poured through her heart were those of hatred.