She expected a reaction but none came. Instead, she continued to feel a puzzling tranquillity. She had never loved him so intensely, yet she was braving serenely this separation full of uncertainties. She tried to explain it to herself, and finally there came to her a phrase which she had often heard years ago at church—“the peace that passeth all understanding.”
“This must be what they meant by it,” she said to herself. “Our love is my religion.”
The next time she was at Joan’s they were not together long before Joan saw that there had been a marvellous change in her. “What is it?” she asked. “Has the tangle straightened?”
“No,” replied Emily. “It is worse, if anything. But I have made a new discovery, I have found the secret of happiness.”
“Love?”
Emily shook her head. “That’s only part of it.”
“Self-sacrifice?”
“I shouldn’t call it sacrifice.” Emily’s face was more beautiful than Joan had ever before seen it. “I think the true name is—self forgotten for love’s sake.”
“Yes,” assented Joan, looking with expanding eyes at the baby-boy playing on the floor at her feet.