“I do feel like it, you darling child! I could talk to you about it better than to any one on earth; but there are some things one cannot speak of even to one’s own heart. That is the trouble now. If I were to let myself indulge freely in imaginings and regrets, I should satisfy the want of the moment, but it would undo me utterly. My great temptation is regret, and I must be strong enough not to regret.”
“Oh, how sad life is!” cried Martha. “I have always thought that you at least ought to be happy. I gave you the name of ‘The Happy Princess,’ out of Tennyson. It has seemed to me from the first that you were a creature who had it in you to command happiness.”
“Ah, dear child, if you could only know how helpless I am there! The best thing that is in me is the power to command courage. That I can, and for the most part do. While that is so, I shall not complain.”
“‘OH, I AM SO, SO SORRY.’”
“Then you are really unhappy? Oh!” said Martha, drawing herself up with an impulsive movement.
“I know what that fervent exclamation means as well as if you had put it into words,” said the princess. “You are wishing that there were some way in which, by sacrificing yourself, you could purchase happiness for me.”
Martha, startled at the correctness of this guess, could say nothing in denial.
“I knew it,” said the princess, reading her face. “I have not the faintest doubt that you would do it; and—now I am going to knock over some of your idealizing of me—there have been moments in my life when my greed for happiness has consumed me so that I believe I would have been willing to take it, and to let another pay the price. That’s a base thing for a woman to say of herself, but so true it is that I thank God I was never tempted when those moods were on me. Something not wholly different from that panting after an impossible joy was upon me this morning. Shall I never get the better of it utterly? Can one overcome it? Did you never have it, Martha? To me joy is impossible, but it is not so to you. Don’t you ever long for it? I will speak to you quite openly, Martha, and tell you this—when I say joy, I mean love. Is there a woman’s heart that does not long for that? Be as honest with me as I have been with you, and tell me.”