“Listen!” said Sara, “listen! If there is an attractiveness in human beings so lovely that it could call your Almighty God Himself from heaven to dwell among them and to die most cruelly for their sakes, is it to be expected that they will not—and who will dare say that they should not?—as mortals themselves, discover qualities in each other which draw out the deepest affection? I have no patience with your religion—none.”
“You are most unkind, and I won't tell you any more,” replied Pensée, who looked, however, not ungrateful for Sara's view of the situation.
“Let me tell you something about me,” said her friend fiercely. “I never say my prayers, because I cannot say them, but I love somebody, too. Whenever I hear his name I could faint. When I see him I could sink into the ground. At the sight of his handwriting I grow cold from head to foot, I tremble, my heart aches so that it seems breaking in two. I long to be with him, yet when I am with him I have nothing to say. I have to escape and be miserable all alone. He is my thought all day: the last before I sleep, the first when I awake. I could cry and cry and cry. I try to read, and I remember not a word. I like playing best, for then I can almost imagine that he is listening. But when I stop playing and look round, I find myself in an empty room. It is awful. I call his name; no one answers. I whisper it; still no answer. I throw myself on the ground, and I say, ‘Think of me! think of me! you shall, you must, you do think of me!’ It is great torture and a great despair. Perhaps it is a madness too. But it is my way of loving. I want to live while I live. If I knew for certain that he loved me—me only—the joy, I think, would kill me. Love! Do you know, poor little angel, what it means? Sometimes it is a curse.”
Pensée, before this torrent, was shaking like some small flower in a violent gale.
“You say things, Sara, that no one says—things that one ought not to say. You must be quieter. You won't be happy when you are married if you begin with so much feeling!”
“I am not going to marry that one,” said Sara bitterly. “I am going to marry Marshire.”
Lady Fitz Rewes had too delicate a face to contain any expression of the alarm and horror she felt at this statement. She frowned, bit her lips, and sank back in her chair. What stroke of fate, she wondered, had overtaken the poor girl? Was she sane? Was she herself? Pensée found some relief in the thought that Sara was not herself—a state into which most people are presumed to fall whenever, from stress or emotion, they become either strictly candid or perfectly natural.
“It is a fancy. Fancies are in my blood,” said Sara; “you need not be anxious.”
“But—but what feeling have you for Marshire?” murmured Pensée.
“I have a faint inclination not to dislike him utterly. And I will be a good wife to him. If I say so, I shall keep my word. You may be sure of that.”