The next writing in Laura’s book was dated more than two months later:
. . . . “I have decided to write again in this book. I have thought it all out carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that it can do no harm and may help me to be steady and sensible. It is the thought, not its expression, that is guilty, but I do not believe that my thoughts are guilty: I believe that they are good. I know that I wish only good. I have read that when people suffer very much the best thing is for them to cry. And so I’ll let myself write out my feelings—and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I’m foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can’t help having absurd feelings like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! Yes, I’ll let it all out here, and then, some day, when I’ve cured myself all whole again, I’ll burn this poor, silly old book. And if I’m not cured before the wedding, I’ll burn it then, anyhow.
“How funny little girls are! From the time they’re little bits of things they talk about marriage—whom they are going to marry, what sort of person it will be. I think Cora and I began when she was about five and I not seven. And as girls grow up, I don’t believe there was ever one who genuinely expected to be an old maid. The most unattractive young girls discuss and plan and expect marriage just as much as the prettier and gayer ones. The only way we can find out that men don’t want to marry us is by their not asking us. We don’t see ourselves very well, and I honestly believe we all think—way deep down—that we’re pretty attractive. At least, every girl has the idea, sometimes, that if men only saw the whole truth they’d think her as nice as any other girl, and really nicer than most others. But I don’t believe I have any hallucinations of that sort about myself left. I can’t imagine—now—any man seeing anything in me that would make him care for me. I can’t see anything about me to care for, myself. Sometimes I think maybe I could make a man get excited about me if I could take a startlingly personal tone with him from the beginning, making him wonder all sorts of you-and-I perhapses—but I couldn’t do it very well probably—oh, I couldn’t make myself do it if I could do it well! And I shouldn’t think it would have much effect except upon very inexperienced men—yet it does! Now, I wonder if this is a streak of sourness coming out; I don’t feel bitter—I’m just thinking honestly, I’m sure.
“Well, here I am facing it: all through my later childhood, and all through my girlhood, I believe what really occupied me most—with the thought of it underlying all things else, though often buried very deep—was the prospect of my marriage. I regarded it as a certainty: I would grow up, fall in love, get engaged, and be married—of course! So I grew up and fell in love with You—but it stops there, and I must learn how to be an Old Maid and not let anybody see that I mind it. I know this is the hardest part of it, the beginning: it will get easier by-and-by, of course. If I can just manage this part of it, it’s bound not to hurt so much later on.
“Yes, I grew up and fell in love with You—for you will always be You. I’ll never, never get over that, my dear! You’ll never, never know it; but I shall love You always till I die, and if I’m still Me after that, I shall keep right on loving you then, of course. You see, I didn’t fall in love with you just to have you for myself. I fell in love with You! And that can never bother you at all nor ever be a shame to me that I love unsought, because you won’t know, and because it’s just an ocean of good-will, and every beat of my heart sends a new great wave of it toward you and Cora. I shall find happiness, I believe, in service—I am sure there will be times when I can serve you both. I love you both and I can serve her for You and you for her. This isn’t a hysterical mood, or a fit of `exaltation’: I have thought it all out and I know that I can live up to it. You are the best thing that can ever come into her life, and everything I can do shall be to keep you there. I must be very, very careful with her, for talk and advice do not influence her much. You love her—she has accepted you, and it is beautiful for you both. It must be kept beautiful. It has all become so clear to me: You are just what she has always needed, and if by any mischance she lost you I do not know what would become——”
“Good God!” cried Richard. He sprang to his feet, and the heavy book fell with a muffled crash upon the floor, sprawling open upon its face, its leaves in disorder. He moved away from it, staring at it in incredulous dismay. But he knew.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Memory, that drowsy custodian, had wakened slowly, during this hour, beginning the process with fitful gleams of semi-consciousness, then, irritated, searching its pockets for the keys and dazedly exploring blind passages; but now it flung wide open the gallery doors, and there, in clear light, were the rows of painted canvasses.