It was between those borders, now massed white with double pinks, softening the air with the scent of them as they breathed it in, that they walked, just as Jane and she had done before.
"Do you ever wish you'd had a child, Hannah?" Mary asked presently, and Hannah replied--
"I don't think I've ever really wanted to be married."
So much was it an answer that would have satisfied her once, that Mary smiled to think how different she had become. Not for one moment had it been her meaning that Hannah should see that smile. Not for one moment would she have understood it. Yet she saw. The sudden seizing of her fingers on Mary's arm almost frightened.
"You smiled," she whispered--"Why did you smile?"
The honest simplicity of her brought Mary to a sudden confusion. She could not answer. Seeing that smile, Hannah had caught her unawares in her thoughts. She knew then she was going to hurt this gentle creature with her simple view of life and her infinite forbearance of the world's treatment of her.
Here was the first moment when truly she felt afraid. Here was the first time she realized that pain is the inevitable accompaniment of life. She tried to begin what she had to say, but fear dried up the words. She moistened her lips, but could not speak.
"Tell me why you smiled," repeated Hannah importunately. "What is it you've got to say?"
Mary had thought it would be easy. So proud, so sure she was, that abruptness had seemed as though it must serve her mood. She tried to be abrupt, but failed.
"Oh, Hannah, I've got such a lot to say," she began, and with an impulse took her sister's arm and of a sudden felt this gentle, gray-haired woman might be as a mother to her when all the world, as now she was realizing with her first confession of it, would be turned against her. "I don't know how to begin. I know you must understand, and I think I want you to understand, more than anybody else. No one else will. Of course I can be sure of that."