“I calc’late there’s somebody might prevent it, Marie,” said the widow, quietly, “and I calc’late there’s somethin’ would fill you up with a kind of regret you ain’t anticipatin’ if it was to happen afterward.”
“Who?” demanded Marie, passionately. “And what?”
“The man you loved might stop you—and comin’ to love a man afterward might bring that kind of remorse that would make dyin’ better ’n livin’.”
Marie stared at the widow, then after one might slowly have counted a dozen she sank into a chair and gazed fixedly downward. Nobody spoke, Jim felt extremely uncomfortable.
Presently Marie lifted her eyes, first to Jim, then to the widow.
“Yes,” she said, “that is possible. I could love, but it would be better that I shouldn’t. Better for him. If I loved it would be no pretty bill-and-coo. It would be love. I should give much, but demand much. I do not think it would be comfortable to be loved by me. If I loved it would be the one great concern of my life. I should have room for nothing else. I have studied myself. And if he did not love me as I loved him I should make him unhappy, for I do not believe men like to be bothered by too much love. I should make him hate me. I should be no sweet domestic animal to greet him with a kiss, and fetch him his slippers, and sit by placidly while he read his paper. Men like comfort and coddling. There would be no comfort with me. I should be jealous—jealous even of the food that gave him pleasure. What man wants such a love! What happiness can come from it? Would you want to be loved that way?” She turned abruptly to Jim.
“I do not believe one can love too much. I don’t believe you know what love is, Miss Ducharme. If love is what I believe, it is not fierce, not a fire that burns beyond control. I think it is gentle; I think love forgives; I think real love manifests itself not by clawing and scratching its object, but by spending itself to procure his happiness—or her happiness. I believe the true love of a man for his wife, or of a woman for her husband, has much in it of the love of father or mother for their child. I do not think love threatens; it shelters. No, Miss Ducharme, the thing you have been talking about is not love at all. I don’t know what it is, but love it is not.”
She looked at him wide-eyed, startled, curious.
“When you love,” he said, “you will see that I am right.”
“I should like to believe you, Mr. Ashe,” she said. “It would be sweet—sweet. But you are wrong. How could you know? Have you loved?”