"But almost everyone marries in the end, you know," she said at last.
"I have lived very comfortably to be eighty-five," retorted Uncle Percival, "and I never married."
"Oh, but you never fell in love," persisted Laura.
"In love? Tush!" protested the old man with scorn, "and why should you? I have never felt the need of it."
"Well, I don't think one can help it sometimes," remonstrated Laura, a little helplessly. "One doesn't always want it, but it comes anyway."
"Then if I didn't want it I wouldn't let it bother me," said Uncle Percival, adding immediately. "What does Rosa think of this state of things, I wonder—Rosa is a very sensible woman."
"Oh, she's heartily pleased—everybody is pleased but you."
Uncle Percival shook his head in stubborn disapproval. "People are always pleased at the mistakes of others," he observed, "it's human nature, I suppose, and they can't help it, but I tell you I've seen a great deal too much of love all my life—and it's better left alone, it's better left alone."
Rising dejectedly, he wandered off to his rabbits, while Laura, as soon as the curtains at the door had fallen together again behind his shrunken little figure, forgot him with that complete forgetfulness of trivial details which is possible only to the mind that is in the possession of an absorbing emotion. All hesitation, all uncertainty, all disappointment, had been swept from her consciousness as if by a destroying and purifying flame; and for the past few weeks she had lived with that passionate swiftness of sensation which gives one an ecstatic sense of rushing, like a winged creature, through crawling time. Life, indeed, was winged for her at the moment; her soul flew; and she felt her happiness beating like a caged bird within her breast. The agony of the imprisoned creature was there also, for she loved blindly without understanding why she loved—and yet it was this hidden mystery of her passion, this divine miracle which attended its conception, that filled the world about her with the invisible, announcing hosts of angels. She could explain nothing—life, death, birth, the ordinary incidents of every day were but so many signs and portents of 'the unseen wonders; and every breath she drew seemed as great a miracle to her as the raising of Lazarus from the tomb.
Closing her eyes she thought of the afternoon before when she had gone out with her lover in his automobile. Life at the instant had condensed itself into a flash of experience, and his face as he looked at her had been clear and strong as the wind which rushed by them. "Faster! faster! let us go faster!" she had begged, "let me live this one hour flying," and even with the words she had wondered if the same rapture would ever enter into her love again? Was it possible to touch the highest point of one's being twice in a single lifetime? Was it given to any human creature to repeat perfection? And he? Would he ever know it again? she questioned, with an uncertainty sharp as a sword that pierced her through. Would she ever find in his eyes a look that would be anything but a shadow of the look she had seen on the day before? Was happiness, after all, as fluid a quantity as the emotion which gave it birth?