"There are some people," Christina said, the words coming from her lips almost involuntarily "who would be afraid to ask you to marry them, just because of your money and position."
"I don't see why a man's silly pride should stand in the way of his love," Cicely retorted; but Christina shook her head sagely.
"Ah! but men do let their pride spoil their love," she said, "and they let their pride spoil other people's lives too," she added, with a wisdom beyond her years. "A man might easily think it would be dishonourable to ask you to marry him—a man who was not rich, or distinguished." She spoke very slowly; in some odd way it seemed, even to herself, as though the words were put into her mouth to speak, and as she uttered them she was looking so intently out of the window, that she did not observe the varying expressions of emotions that flitted over Cicely's face.
"One would not know how to beat down the sort of pride you describe," she answered, after a pause, during which Christina's eyes fixed themselves upon a flock of pigeons, wheeling about the plane-trees in the square. "A woman is so tied, so handicapped; she can only possess her soul in patience, and wait."
"I don't believe I should wait," again it seemed to Christina, as though the words were being forced from her. "If I knew that only pride, silly, ridiculous pride, was holding a man back, a man who loved me and I him—well, I don't believe I would wait. I think—there's a limit to possessing one's soul in patience."
"But Christina—surely!"—Cicely's blue eyes opened wide, she looked into the girl's animated face, with wondering incredulity.
"Surely—yes," Christina answered with an audacious little laugh. "If the man cared for me, and I knew it, I—would not let his pride spoil his life and mine. If he was too proud to ask me—why, then, I should ask him—that is all." With the laughing words, she turned and left the room, murmuring that it was time she attended to Baba's tea; but after she had gone, Cicely sat very still, her mind haunted by the words the other had just spoken.
"I would not let his pride spoil his life and mine. If he was too proud to ask me—why, then, I should ask him, that is all."
"But such a big 'all,'" Cicely reflected, her eyes, like Christina's, following the wheeling flight of the wood-pigeons about the plane-trees' tops; "it is such an impossible thing even to contemplate doing, and yet——"
And yet! Sitting there alone, she reviewed the past happy years, when John had been her safeguard, her protector, the shadow of a great rock in her life, shielding her from everything that could hurt or vex her. And after those years of full content had come the lean years of sorrow—the blank desolation of her widowhood, the loneliness, the overpowering loneliness, which no kindly friends nor kindred could really lessen or assuage. And now, new possibilities of happiness seemed to be opening before her, if—but again it was such a big "if." How could she put out her hand to snatch at what had not been offered to her, what might never be offered to her, but which, nevertheless, she knew with a woman's sure knowledge was hers?