“I’d rather be downright wicked than worldly,” she said, defiantly.
“Oh, my darling,” said Una, “you don’t know what being wicked is like! But, Amethyst, our lives are made for us. That is what I have found out—made just as they ought to be.”
“Oh yes, in a sense, of course,” said Amethyst, “but there’s a good deal of making left for ourselves and other people, and we, or they, don’t make them very well.”
“Yes,” said Una, with shining eyes, “outside things; but not the real life, not the life within. Amethyst, the feel of that Presence is as real to me, as the feel of your arms round me when I am tired and miserable—as real, and even better. Come what may, I shall have it to remember. I know now, how the Martyrs could smile when they were burnt to death!”
Amethyst gazed at her, uncomprehending, almost wishing that Una was not going to enter on grown-up life with this new strange force within her. She recalled a saying that she had once heard Mr Riddell quote, “that a great deal of religion needed a great deal of looking after,” and she felt half afraid. She was correct and careful in the performance of the religious duties in which she had been trained; but all the glow of feeling, with which she had knelt by Lucian’s side in Cleverley Church, had departed with the earthly love from which she had hardly distinguished it.
“I’m afraid, dear,” she said gently, “that Eaton Square won’t be a very heavenly sort of place for either of us. If we are tied to any stakes there, no doubt we shall have to smile at them, but I doubt whether the smiles will come from heaven!”
“I shall not mind Eaton Square now,” said Una.
“Well,” said Amethyst, giving herself a sort of mental shake, “anyhow, we have to live there for the next three months. So we must do the best we can.”