“Ay?” said Dame Hilda when she stayed. I think she wanted to make her talk.
“I scarce know how to say it,” quoth she. “But it seemed to me that for those who would have it so, Satan was shut in with them, and pleasure was shut out. And also, for those who would have it so, God was shut in with them, and snares and temptations—some of them—were shut out. Only some: but it was something to be rid of them. If it were possible to have only those who wanted to shut out the world, and to shut themselves in with God! That is the theory: and that would be Heaven on earth. But it does not work in practice.”
“Yet you would fain return thither?” said Dame Hilda.
Isabel looked into the fire and answered not, until she said, all suddenly, “Dame Hilda, be there two of you, or but one?”
“Truly, Dame Isabel, I take not your meaning.”
“Ah!” saith she; “then is there but one of you. If so, you cannot conceive me. Thou dost, Ellen?”
“Ay, Dame Isabel, that do I, but too well.”
“They have easier lives, methinks, that are but one. You look on me, Dame Hilda, as who should say, What nonsense doth this maid talk! But if you knew what it was to have two natures within you, pulling you diverse ways, sometimes the one uppermost, and at times the other; and which of the twain be you, that cannot you tell—I will tell you, I have noted this many times”—Isabel’s voice sank as if she feared to be overheard—“in them whose father and mother have been of divers dispositions. Some of the children may take after the one, and some after the other; but there will be one, at least, who partaketh both, and then they pull him divers ways, that he knoweth no peace.” Isabel’s audience had been larger than she supposed. As she ended, with a weary sigh, a soft hand fell upon her head, and I who, sat upon her knees, could better see than she, looked up into my Lady’s face.
“Sit still, daughter,” said she, as Isabel strove to rise. “Nay, sweet heart, I am not angered at thy fantasy, though truly I, being but one like Dame Hilda, conceive not thy meaning. It may be so. I have not all the wit upon earth, that I should scorn or set down the words of them that speak out of other knowledge than mine. But, my Isabel, there is another way than this wherein thou mayest have two natures.”
“How so, Dame, an’ it like you?”