"Not unless I am fond of them. When comparative strangers kiss me and gush over me I feel so dreadfully uncomfortable I don't know what to do. There was a very gushing woman in our last circuit who used to hold my hand for hours together."
"I shouldn't have minded that," said Alice.
Joanna laughed. "But I did: I was simply paralyzed with terror; every time she gave my hand a squeeze, I squeezed back; and if my squeeze hadn't been quite as hard as hers, I felt as if I were in debt and ought to be county-courted."
Paul was dreadfully bored by this style of conversation. He was not sufficiently in love with Alice to care to discuss emotions with her; for a man does not like to talk about feelings, except to the woman he happens to be in love with—and then he only does it to please her, and wishes to goodness she would select some other topic.
It was a very happy life at Chayford just then, especially to Joanna. Each day was full—but not too full—of duties; and nearly every evening there was some mild religious excitement to take the minister's family out, and prevent life from ever seeming dull. There were the week-evening service and the class-meeting and the prayer-meeting and the Dorcas-meeting—four full nights for certain; and there often came little irregular and extra means of grace for the other evenings of the week; so that every day there was the pleasant feeling that something was going to happen after tea.
This cheerful and busy type of existence exactly suited Joanna; it satisfied her completely, and she had no longings for anything different—neither much patience with the people who had.
But Alice dreamed dreams of a fuller life, which was not hers at all, but Paul's; a life devoted to adoring Paul when he succeeded, and adoring him still more when he failed. She was content to stand afar off among the crowd who were eager to crown Paul as victor in the days of his triumph, if only she might have the right to come near and comfort him in times of failure and humiliation. She fully believed that Paul was one of the greatest men alive, and would prove himself such to the world in general; but she would not have loved him a whit less—but rather more—had she thought him doomed to fail in everything that he undertook. Paul was Paul—that was enough for her; if the world did not do him justice, so much the worse for the world.
As for Paul himself, he knew nothing of Alice's girlish devotion to him, and would not have thanked her for it if he had. He meant to succeed; so the love that beareth all things and never faileth, was not an article for which he had any use. The admiration that success is bound to command was more in his line at present; and that, of course, one demands as one's right, and never thanks anybody for. To Paul just then the love that endures and is patient was as uninteresting as chrysanthemums and china-asters would be in spring. There comes a time when we cherish chrysanthemums and china-asters—even of the most ordinary sort; but that is not till the violets and the roses and the lilies are all faded.