She would not tell Margaret that night, for the business and discussion of the day had wearied her, but there was an almost unusual tenderness in her manner, which Margaret attributed to her fear of having unduly urged the non-signature of Mr. Robinson's papers.
Old Martha was ready at her post to help Margaret to bed. Adèle sent her away peremptorily. "No one shall touch you to-night but me," she said, stooping over the arm-chair in which Margaret was sitting, and loosening her hair with gentle fingers; then, as Margaret smilingly protested, "Just for this once," she pleaded; and her friend did not see, for the long, blinding tresses, that slow tears were falling one by one from the young girl's eyes.
There was exceeding comfort in the passing to and fro of those busy fingers, for their every touch spoke eloquently of love. This it was that Margaret felt. Once she caught one of the busy hands and pressed it to her lips.
"What should I do without you, Adèle?" she said softly. "Little one, I begin to fear I am loving you too much. My loves are unfortunate. It is the old story of the fair gazelle. Scold me well; I deserve it for my sentimental folly; still, the feeling is here—I can't get rid of it."
Adèle had to choke back her tears before she could answer. When she did her voice was slightly husky: "I don't think loves can ever be unfortunate—quite altogether, I mean—for you know to lose for a time is not to lose for always, and where there is love, real true love, there must be lasting." She paused for a moment, as if in earnest struggle to express herself worthily, and then her voice grew more earnest and her eyes seemed to deepen: "It is charity—love—that abideth—the only earthly feeling we can never do without."
She had finished brushing and combing Margaret's long hair; she was sitting on a stool at her feet gazing into the fire.
"Adèle," said Margaret, "you are wiser than I, or perhaps there's something altogether wrong about me. I cannot take the comfort you do out of these generalities. Child, child," her voice grew intensely earnest, "it is not this beautiful something, this 'charity which abideth,' that I want; it is my personal loves—my husband, my child."
The young girl looked up into her eyes; she answered with the calm assurance of faith: "Margaret, be calm: you shall have them. But do you know I never look upon all these things as generalities; if love is to last, our personal loves are to last too." She sighed. "I know I express myself badly. I wish I could make you understand what I mean."
"I think I do understand," said Margaret thoughtfully. "Adèle," she said after a pause, during which perhaps almost the very same thought had been passing through their minds, "our love, yours and mine and your cousin's, the strange tangle which your straightforwardness and self-forgetfulness unravelled, is certainly of the lasting kind. The future may throw us widely apart, but I think that neither here nor hereafter can it ever be the same as if we had not loved."
This time Adèle did not answer, because she could not. The shadow of that dreadful separation was on her spirit. After a few moments' silence she said lightly that Margaret had talked quite enough—that it was time for her to rest; which dictum Margaret obeyed with great willingness.