"But if he is so wild that a woman who hasn't even an extra hairpin wants to hide her daughter from him, do you think he'll make her happy?"
There was a pause.
"Lassie," her friend said, presently, "do you know I used to be just like you. I saw only the finite, too."
"Yes?"
"Yes, and I often wonder what would have become of me if I had not learned through love to finally escape out of the bonds and shackles of ordinary conditions, and to contemplate them only as either behind or below me. How can we judge in the case of another? All that I know absolutely in this case is that I have strayed into the midst of a pitiful story. All I can do is to try to help that pain. That poor girl is nothing but a passing ghost to you; to me she is a link in the chain-armor of life that covers my spirit during its earthly war. As I said before, there are no chance meetings, there are no accidents; there's nothing trivial in life after one once grasps the greatness of the whole. You can make things trivial by belittling them, or you can make them great. I make Miss Lathbun great because a man who is great is interested in her."
"But how do you know that he's great? Or that he is interested in her? She may have made it all up; I think that she did, myself."
Alva turned from the window.
"My dear child," she said, approaching the girl and laying her hand on her shoulder, "I feel as if there were a thick veil between us; how can I tell you what I think, when you don't want to understand what I try to say? Suppose she did make it up? Suppose she and her mother are anything you please? Still, I'd be glad that I believed in them. One little grain of real belief may possibly be the seed of a new life for them; and even if it isn't, think what it means to me to be able to believe in people. It means that I am looking for good, instead of looking for evil. Can't you see how much better that must be for me personally?"
Lassie lifted her eyes to see what she called "the white look," on Alva's face. She felt ashamed of her own standpoint.
At that instant the dinner-bell rang loudly below.