"Lassie," she said, one noon, as they stood on the bridge looking down into the tumbling waters below, "I wonder if I were ever like you, and I wonder if you will ever be like me!"
"How so?"
"If you will ever be really in love? I can't believe that very many people really know what love means,—that is, in the way that I mean it. If they did, it could not possibly be a shock to any one to see me doing what I am going to do. It would seem the only thing to do."
Lassie made no reply for a little, then she said, slowly: "When we love, we look forward to life together generally; that is why people won't understand you." She hesitated again. "I mean-that seems to me to be the reason; perhaps I'm wrong."
Alva reflected, too, her eyes upon the autumn glory flaunting its color over the deep gray shadows before her. "Even if one puts it all on the material plan, I should think that the whole world would recognize by this time that it isn't the man that a woman loves that fills her soul with ringing joy; it's the way in which she loves the man. It's herself and the effect of himself upon her thoughts that counts. It isn't the house, but the life within the house that makes a home, you know."
Some shy, latent color rose up in Lassie's face. "I never thought about it in just that way," she said; "but I suppose it's the truth."
"My dear, it is the truth. Of course it is the truth. No one to whom sufficient has been revealed can doubt it. If you can't see it so, it is because you are not yet old enough to comprehend. When I say 'old enough' I don't mean the Lassie who is eighteen; I mean the Lassie who began long before this mass of rock became even so stable as to be shifting ocean sand. I mean the Lassie who departed out of God to work in His way until she shall return to Him in some divine and distant hereafter."
"Oh, Alva, you do say such queer things!"
"Perhaps; but you see I know all this. It came to me through dire hours of need. I've demonstrated its truth, step by step. Try to grasp the idea."
"Do people ever think you crazy?" The question came timidly.