'I am sure I do not, but I am going to eat some. Breakfast means nerve, Brenda, and we shall want all our nerve for the next few days.'
Reluctantly the girl took her place at the table. Her companion was relentless; moreover, she was aggravatingly placid, even to speculation.
'There are some lives,' she said, 'which seem to be allowed as a warning and lesson to the rest of us. No doubt it is very instructive to the onlookers; but I am sometimes a little sorry for the examples themselves.'
Brenda looked up, and presently resumed her pretence of eating.
'I am afraid,' she said, 'that his was not a very happy life. If he had the opportunity of living it over again ... I doubt ... whether he would accept it, I mean.'
'Oh,' returned the elder lady with remarkable conviction, 'none of us would do that!'
Brenda showed no disposition to stray off into generalities.
'Did you,' she asked quietly, 'really mean what you said just now about Alice? Is it your honest opinion that she loved Alfred Huston through it all?'
Mrs. Wylie sipped her tea meditatively.
'There are,' she answered after a pause, '... there are, I am afraid, some women who go through their lives without ever achieving the power of loving truly and wholly. It sometimes seems to me that Alice is one of them. They enjoy as others do, and they endure; but love is neither enjoyment nor endurance. It is a speciality, and the women who possess it (though they be called coquettes, flirts, wantons) are the salt of the earth. Alice came as near loving Alfred Huston as she will ever be to loving anyone beyond herself.'