He stood hesitating in front of her, his mind wholly occupied by the need to get her comforted. She was tired, he said to himself, and folks didn’t always mean what they said when they were tired. His heart ached as he looked at her, remembering as he did the fine joyfulness of spirit with which she had parted from him at noon.
“You’d best tell me about it, hadn’t you, Mattie?” he ventured presently. “You’d feel a deal better if you could tell somebody.”
“There’s nothing to tell....” She avoided his eyes, feeling the colour rise in her cheek. She was ashamed that even Kirkby should see her in this moment of defeat. “Nothing much, I mean,” she went on, in a dull tone, “and what there is you’d likely not understand.”
“I could try, anyway, Mattie.”
She gave a deep sigh and put her hands before her face. He waited patiently, standing with that still poise of his in which he seemed to breathe as quietly as a flower. And almost at once she began to speak, jerkily at first, but gradually gathering smoothness and speed, and keeping her hands always on either side of her face as if they guarded her.
“It’s just we’ve waited too long.... Things alter if you wait. You stop wanting things you’ve always wanted, and you get to like things you used to hate. And you get old, waiting. I didn’t know till to-day I was getting old.”
“You’re not old, Mattie.”
“I’m old inside,—old in my heart. Folks as keep their hearts up never get old, but I’ve not kept mine. If I could have kept my heart up I’d have been young, even at a hundred, but I’ve not kept it up. I’ve been letting go all the time, though I didn’t know it.”
“How d’you mean—letting go?”
“Giving up about going to Canada,—that’s what I’m trying to say. I’ve been thinking all these years I’d be mad to go when the time came. I thought I’d be that glad I wouldn’t mind what I found Over There or what I’d to leave behind. And it isn’t like that at all. Now it’s really come to it, I’m—afraid.”