"I love him enough, dear Miss Brokenshire," I said, with some emotion, "to be eager to give my life to the object of making him happy."
She accepted this in silence. At least it was silence for a time, after which she said, in measured, organ-like tones:
"We can't make other people happy, you know. We can only do our duty—and let their happiness take care of itself. They must make themselves happy! It's a mistake for any of us to feel responsible for more than doing right. "When we do right other people must make the best they can of it."
"I believe that, too," I responded, earnestly—"only that it's sometimes so hard to tell what is right."
There was again an interval of silence. The voice, when it came out of the dimness, might have been that of the Pythian virgin oracle. The utterances I give were not delivered consecutively, but in answer to questions and observations of my own.
"Right, on the whole, is what we've been impelled to do when we've been conscientiously seeking the best way. . . . Forces catch us, often contradictory and bewildering forces, and carry us to a certain act, or to a certain line of action. Very well, then; be satisfied. Don't go back. Don't torture yourself with questionings. Don't dig up what has already been done. That's done! Nothing can undo it. Accept it as it is. If there's a wrong or a mistake in it life will take care of it. . . . Life is not a blind impulse, working blindly. It's a beneficent, rectifying power. It's dynamic. It's a perpetual unfolding. It's a fire that utilizes as fuel everything that's cast into it. . . ."
And yet when I kissed her to say good-by I got the impression that she didn't like me or that she didn't trust me. I was not always liked, but I was generally trusted. The idea that this Brokenshire seeress, this suffering priestess whose whole life was to lie on a couch and think, and think, and think, had reserves in her consciousness on my account was painful. I said so to Hugh that evening.
"Oh, you mustn't take Mildred's gassing too seriously," he advised. "Gets a lot of ideas in her head: but—poor thing—what else can she do? Since she doesn't know anything about real life, she just spins theories on the subject. Whatever you want to know, little Alix, I'll tell you."
"Thanks," I said, dryly, explaining the shiver which ran through me by the fact that we were sitting in the loggia, in the open air.
"Then we'll go in."