Who shall say when in this secret core a wonderful something began to quicken and to grow? So fine were its beginnings that Desire herself knew them only as new bloom and color, 'violets sweeter, the blue sky bluer'—the old eternal miracle of a new-made earth.
She had called this new thing friendship and had been content. Only today, when she had for an instant glimpsed life through the eyes of Agnes Martin, had there seemed possible a greater word. In that quiet room another name had whispered around her heart like the first breath of a rising wind. She had not dared to listen. Yet, without listening, she heard. And now, through Li Ho's letter, that other Self who would have none of love, stretched out a phantom hand and beckoned.
The professor took the letter from her gravely, retaining, for an instant the unsteady hand that gave it.
"Aren't you able to get away from it yet?" he asked kindly.
"No. Perhaps I never shall. When the memory comes back I feel—sick. It is even worse in retrospect. When it was my daily life, I lived it. But now it seems impossible. Am I getting more cowardly, do you think?"
Spence smiled. "I hope you are," he told her. "When you lived under a daily strain you were probably keyed to a sort of harmony with it. Now you are getting more normal. Life is a thing of infinite adjustment."
"You think I could get 'adjusted' again if I had to?"
"You won't have to. Why discuss it?"
"Because it puzzles me. Why do I mind things more now than I did? I used to feel quite casual about father's oddities. They never seemed to exactly matter. But now," naively, "I would so much like to have a father like other people."
"That is more normal, too."