“I had to come to see you, Patience,” she continued after a moment. “I have no one else; I could never have said a word of this to mamma or May. And I like you better than any one in the world except Reginald Wynne. And you seem to understand things. Do tell me what to do.”
“Do this: Be true to your ideals. If love means, and has always meant more to you than anything else in the world, marry Reginald Wynne. If money and power and luxury are the very essentials of happiness to you, marry the other man. No temporary aberration can permanently divert one’s paramount want from its natural course. As soon as the novelty has gone, the ego swings back to its old point of view as surely as water does that has been temporarily dammed. There is only one thing that persists, and that is the ideal,—that habit of mind which is bred of heredity and environment, even where care or consciousness is lacking. It is as relentless and pitiless as the law of cause and effect. I believe it would outlive a very leprosy of the soul. And it makes no difference whether that ideal be great or small, high or low, its hold is precisely the same, for it is individuality itself. Rosita is happy because she has realised her ideal. Miss Tremont was happy because she lived up to hers. Miss Beale was supremely satisfied with herself when she let a man die whom she might have saved by smirching her ideals. The religionists are happy generally, not through communion with the presiding deity, as they imagine, but because they have arbitrarily created a sort of spiritual Blackstone whom they delight to obey. The author is happy when he toils, even without hope of reward. Martyrs have known ecstasy—But one could go on for a week. Don’t marry Wynne if you feel that you would be unhappy in poverty after the first few months; and if you feel that great wealth without love would be misery, don’t marry the other.”
“Oh, I could like Latimer Burr well enough,” said Hal, staring gloomily at the fire; “and after a time I suppose I’d forget. You see, I have been in love so short a time that the wrench would be a good deal less violent than the wrench from luxury—I’d soon get over it, I expect. But I do like him—I never thought I could feel like this.”
Patience fondled the sleek head, but she was not in a mood to feel in sympathy with love. The only thing that to her seemed of paramount importance was to fix a clear eye on the future.
“You see,” she said, “the present is ever with us, and the past recedes farther and farther. If the rich man can give you what you most want, time will make you forget the very sensation of love. If you marry Wynne and the love goes, you will have equal difficulty to recall it, and nothing to compensate in the present.”
“I’m not afraid that it would go; but I know that I should be thoroughly miserable poor, and make him miserable too. I do love it all so—all that money means—why, one can’t even be well groomed without money. It has gone to make up nine-tenths of my composition; the other tenth is only a bit of miserable wax. But I love this new feeling, and I never believed that anything could be so sweet. Oh, dear; I’ll have to dry up. Here comes Bev.”
“Remember this,” said Patience, “and let it console you: however you feel or are torn, you’ll do one thing only,—follow along the line of least resistance.”
Beverly entered and kissed his sister affectionately. Her back was to the light, and he did not notice her swollen eyes.
“Well, you are looking hilarious,” she remarked in her usual flippant tones. “Has Tammany gone lame, or Mrs. Langtry refused to take her five bars?”
“My wife doesn’t love me!” Beverly had brooded upon his wrongs for two months. Hal’s words were as a match to a mine.