"Knowing is not enough," she said. "That's one of the easy things, I find. It's feeling I have to cultivate."
He nodded curtly. "You're quite right. I do believe you're growing up. Good-bye, my dear."
The weariness she confessed to was in her face, the taste of humiliation was in her mouth, but hope was in her heart, like a low sound of singing. She would not listen to it frankly, but it murmured there like the noise of constant water, hardly acknowledged, yet filling life with meaning. It sang through her dreams at night and mingled with the talking of the dark lake's water, for she was restored to her place under the mountain, and now, while she waited, she had no doubt of whose footfall she expected, whose hand she wished to grasp, and, when the morning came, flashing truth on her receptive mind, she had to own her need of Alexander. But, indeed, she was glad to own it. She had gone past a state in which pride could be greater than her love and, as if to make amends for her disloyalty, she acclaimed him. It was not love she tried to disavow, but hope, and even there she failed.
He was coming at Easter, and Easter was not far off, yet she looked for a letter. If he knew the truth—and when had her father kept it from him?—he would surely write; but she did not hear from him, and the tiredness in her face overcame the secret joy. With a little twist of bitterness about her lips, she looked back at her girlhood and saw a fiercely independent Theresa stretching out hands to a future made glorious only by her own powers, subject only to her own genius, and here was Theresa, grown a woman, wearing out her strength with longing, conscious that her whole life had been bound by human beings, that she had no genius but that of drawing people to her and giving them of herself. There was to be no widespread fame for her, but there might be happiness and growth; and Alexander was the soil in which she knew her roots could deepen, he was the sun and the rain, yet he denied her everything. Oh, why did he not write? she cried within herself. Since the coming of that one letter he had sent her, filled with the breath of the hills and his own being, she had believed in Alexander's love; yet he was silent, though he must know her to be free. Did he scorn her fickleness, or had he changed? She tortured herself with questions, then cast them from her and stilled herself, glad to give love without reward.
"You are not grieving, not regretting?" her father asked her one night.
It was a few days before Easter, the time which was to bring Alexander, yet the marks of trouble were fretted under her eyes and hollowed in the shadowy places of her cheeks, for hope and despair and dread were battling for her heart.
"Yes, I'm regretting many things. No, I don't want Basil back, but I want my—my wholeness back. I had no right to give him anything, poor soul! and I feel there are little bits of me strewed everywhere." She laughed. "It's not that I set so high a value on those little bits, but it doesn't seem quite fair on a possible other person!"
Without the usual hesitation of his emotions, he asked a direct question, looking her in the eyes. "Would you like some other person?" He seemed to hold his breath until he heard.
She coloured, but looked smiling back at him. "Of course I should. A satisfactory one. I'm human—and I want the human gifts. Look—I'm twenty-five, and I have done none of the things you wanted me to do. Have I? Have I?"
"My dear, you have been nearly all the world to me."