"I don't mind anything that you want to do, Alva."
"It's storming in upon me what life was to have been. What does the world know of love? Love is something too great to comprehend. It costs blood and years and tears. It goes so deep that the very joy in it cuts like a knife. I knew that I was only to have had him a few weeks, that I should have to compress all that I felt for him into them. But what those few weeks would have meant! When to be quiet together was in itself all that we asked! When we should have had a library and a piano, and the gorge to look out over, and one another to talk to,—to be with!" She stopped—her breath failed her.
There was a pause, as if to let the tide of grief sweep up and out again.
"Oh, Lassie, we had waited so long and hopelessly," she went on finally, her sentences short and tense and broken. "I tried to be so patient. I tried so hard to do well with the bit of life dealt out to me. As much as I could, I followed in his path in the giving of my all to others and neither asking nor expecting for myself. I hoped nothing for us—nothing for us! And then I had to see him stretched out—crushed—maimed, and I had to live still, and smile into his eyes, and tell him that even that was more than I had deserved. And then came our dream—our precious dream—the promise of those few, sweet, perfect days! Oh, but why should I repine? I have been so happy. I have contemplated the heights, even if it was not given me to reach them."
There was another pause.
"Lassie, it is not my soul that is wailing; my soul is very strong and resolute. He left work undone and even this afternoon it came to me that that work was part of him and that in doing it I should do for him. If we could suffer annihilation in a good cause, we should survive in the cause. If I carry forward all that he held in heart, I shall continue to be one with him. I know it. I longed unutterably to be with him, to make his pain lighter, to share his hours at the last. I thought a great deal of our happiness, but I thought also of what he would teach me to do for the world. Oh, I can believe that he suffered last night. It was only the edge of the storm that brushed over me, but I know how I suffered. There are some men who cannot die, who are too sorely needed; and he was such a one. He did not want to leave his work."
She stopped, and Lassie felt the tide of grief rise full and ebb again.
"It wasn't love or marriage as the world understands it; but it was the supreme self sacrifice that my spirit cried for in consecration. I thought that I was to be greatly fitted for a great work."
Lassie whispered: "Perhaps you have been fitted."
"No. No! Heaven ordained that the sacrifice and the consecration should be greater than I had ever imagined. It ordained that he should pass away alone and leave me alone, too; and now it is left me to work out a new salvation. I try not to doubt, I do trust God completely. But I cannot see why—or how! Not yet. But, at any rate, the worst for me is come. I have touched bottom. Battle for me is past."