Miriam stood with the teapot in her hand, looking forward to everlasting Sundays of making tea for Miss Holland and charming her with conversation. They had talked all the afternoon without weariness. The day stretched back long and eventful, full of talk and laughter, to the far-off episode of the morning. Filled with memories, the rooms had grown dear. And the evening lay ahead, secure, if they chose to remain shut up here together. Then a week apart. No evenings. Miss Holland coming home late and tired. There would be only the week-ends for the continuation of their talk.
“The fiancée came to tea yesterday,” she said, unawares and stopped. Miss Holland, surely, must be weary of her stories. “I must stop,” she said, “finish my tea and absolutely, really unpack.”
“By no means, mademoiselle, having uttered the fascinating word, you must continue.”
Forcing back a smile, Miriam went on with her story. Marvelling at a world that had left this woman to loneliness. Lonely as she was, she scanned life unenviously, placed herself at once sympathetically within the experience of anyone presented to her. It was as if she herself had had vast experience. Yet in her life there were only those two parts; the vicarage home until she was thirty-five and then the life in London. She had brought with her all the old-fashioned ideas, and yet, without being a socialist, had a forward-going mind, a surer certainty of social transformation than was to be found amongst the Lycurgans.
“I told her I hoped she knew she was marrying the best man in the world.”
“Delightful. You made her very happy.”
“Although extremely strong-minded and in the midst of a successful career, she is a girl, the English girl in the midst of the divine illusion.”
“Why Divine illusion? So contradictory.”
“Well, illusion because its picture of what life with the beloved will be is mistaken. Divine because it reveals to both the best in themselves and each other, what they really are, without knowing it until then.”
“Y ... es,” said Miss Holland, clasping the edge of the table and gazing out through the window. “It is unfortunate that it is so frequently doomed to die and inevitably to change.”