Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's fine eyes were glowing.
"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through the old traditions—who knows it better than I? But you must have courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that other—your rightful mate—how can he fulfil himself without you?"
Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."
"But it's not—there's no one who——"
"Bambina—ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges to smaller souls. Leave them, I say!"
Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.
"I do not ask for names—for details. I may perhaps have hoped for a fuller, freer response from you—but I understand. Je comprends tout—je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle. But whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must find courage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily. And after all—what are you risking? The good opinion of conventional moralists!"
Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of utter contempt for all conventional moralists.
"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, my Lily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only one man—though many have desired me—but only one man who supremely mattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he was bound—she who had called herself my friend—she betrayed us both. She refused him his freedom."
Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's reception of such a climax.