And yet Lucilla’s life was over, unlived. As she herself had said, her chances had gone by. Torquay remained. It was not very difficult to imagine her days there. An old lady—the placid kindness accorded by the aged to the middle-ageing—the outside interests of a little music, a few books, a flower-garden—the pathetic, vicarious planning for scarcely-seen nephews and nieces—the quick, solitary walks, cut short by the fear of being missed, and then, as years went on, more solitude, and again more solitude.
Lucilla had said: “I’m not an optimist now—but I’m free.”
From the bottom of his heart Owen recalled with thankfulness the fact of Lucilla’s freed spirit.
It was the best that life would ever hold for her now.
His thoughts turned to Flora.
Quentillian could not envisage her life: eternally secluded, eternally withdrawn. She was lost to them, as they were lost to her.
Subconsciously, he was aware of associations connected with Flora’s vocation upon which he preferred not to dwell. He knew, dimly, intuitively, that Lucilla’s merciless clarity of outlook had seen Flora less as a voluntary sacrifice than as the self-deluded victim of fanaticism.
But no doubts had crossed the Canon’s mind on Flora’s behalf. He had known no distrust of her craving for self-immolation, no dread of reaction coming too late.
He had thanked God for the dedication of Flora.
The one of his children for whom he had grieved perhaps longest was Valeria. And it was on Valeria that Owen’s thoughts dwelt most gladly. She had purchased reality for herself, and although the price might include his own temporary discomfiture, Quentillian rejoiced in it candidly. Nevertheless, it was Val’s error, and not Val’s achievement, that her father had seen. His hope for her had been the one of ultimate reparation implied in his own favourite words—“All things work together for good.”