"But you are not ready to understand yet."
"But I am ready, I will learn to be ready."
"Yes, and I'm going to teach you. But I have to go slowly because I have to hunt for the words. You are such a little thing—such a baby—to be trusted with life; because you see most people never live—they just exist. They are only a few steps up on the staircase, and when they are dragged or pushed above the place that they are in by nature, they are apt to be dizzy. I want to teach you life, Lassie; but I don't want to make you dizzy." She paused, and a whimsical little smile danced across her face; "and besides, dear, we must get undressed. It is after ten o'clock."
"Just a minute more, Alva; it seems as if I cannot break off right here. And I won't be dizzy. I know that whatever you think and do must be right and best. I want to learn to think just as you do. I want to be told how you learned. I always knew you were so very good, and truly, dear, I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd chosen to marry a missionary or to go to that island where the lepers are—not after the first minute, you know; it would have been just like you."
"Oh, no, Lassie, it wouldn't have been like me at all. For ever so many reasons. My first duty in life—the duty that comes before every other—is to my father and mother. No claim could be strong enough to justify my leaving them; and then, besides, I'm not a Christian, except in the sense that I believe with Christ, and that isn't enough for any mission or any leper nowadays."
There was a little pause; then Lassie said: "But you are going to leave your father and mother now, aren't you?"
Alva smiled. "But for such a little while, dear," she said, gently; "you forget how short the time is to be!" There was an instant's pause and then she turned suddenly and her face had the bright color of deep emotion flaming in it. "Lassie, Lassie," she exclaimed, with a strength of feeling that startled the other into a sudden cry, "I'm trying to be calm, I'm trying to talk to you quietly,—I don't want you to think me a mad woman,—but I am so much closer to some other keener, sharper world of soul and sensation than you or any one can realize, that I can hardly curb myself to the dull, unknowing, unfeeling, throb, throb, of this one. Don't you know, Lassie, that people are getting married every day,"—she stopped and pressed her hands tightly together, her eyes starring the pallor of her face with that curious radiance of which the young girl had spoken to Ronald. "Oh," she went on, "to think that people are getting married every day because they need cooks or because they need care, or because the man has money or because the girl is pretty, and they go forth un-understanding, and they live along somehow; and the word that means their sort of companionship is all that I can use to speak of the evening that I shall return here, his wife, and fall on my knees beside him and realize that all my loneliness and waiting and hoping has ended, and that at last—at last—we are to be together, even if only for a few weeks, a few days, a few hours. A foretaste of eternity! A memory of what was in the beginning of all things!"
Ceasing to speak, she clasped her hands more tightly yet, and her eyes closed slowly. Lassie sat still and trembling. Her breath came unevenly, but she saw that Alva's swept in and out of her bosom with a wide evenness that belies unconquered emotion. After a minute the other opened her eyes and laid her hand lightly upon the girl's head. "I frighten you, I know that I frighten you," she said; "you think that I am crazy after all."
"No, I don't, Alva; but I can't think what kind of a man the man can be to make you feel that marrying him will be so different from marrying any other man."
"You can't think, because you don't know what love can mean to people—what it has meant to him or what it has meant to me."