"Yes?" he said, tentatively—"Well!—go on—if you loved a man?——"
"If I loved a man, David,"—she continued, slowly, clasping her hands meditatively behind her back, and looking thoughtfully into the glowing centre of the fire—"I should love him so completely that I should never think of anything in which he had not the first and greatest share. I should see his kind looks in every ray of sunshine—I should hear his loving voice in every note of music,—if I were to read a book alone, I should wonder which sentence in it would please him the most—if I plucked a flower, I should ask myself if he would like me to wear it,—I should live through him and for him—he would be my very eyes and heart and soul! The hours would seem empty without him——"
She broke off with a little sob, and her eyes brimmed over with tears.
"Why Mary! Mary, my dear!" murmured Helmsley, stretching out his hand to touch her—"Don't cry!"
"I'm not crying, David!" and a rainbow smile lighted her face—"I'm only just—feeling! It's like when I read a little verse of poetry that is very sad and sweet, I get tears into my eyes—and when I talk about love—especially now that I shall never know what it is, something rises in my throat and chokes me——"
"But you do know what it is,"—said Helmsley, powerfully moved by the touching simplicity of her confession of loneliness—"There isn't a more loving heart than yours in the world, I'm sure!"
She came and knelt down again beside him.
"Oh yes, I've a loving heart!" she said—"But that's just the worst of it! I can love, but no one loves or ever will love me—now. I'm past the age for it. No woman over thirty can expect to be loved by a lover, you know! Romance is all over—and one 'settles down,' as they say. I've never quite 'settled'—there's always something restless in me. You're such a dear old man, David, and so kind!—I can speak to you just as if you were my father—and I daresay you will not think it very wrong or selfish of me if I say I have longed to be loved sometimes! More than that, I've wished it had pleased God to send me a husband and children—I should have dearly liked to hold a baby in my arms, and soothe its little cries, and make it grow up to be happy and good, and a blessing to every one. Some women don't care for children—but I should have loved mine!"
She paused a moment, and Helmsley took her hand, and silently pressed it in his own.
"However,"—she went on, more lightly—"it's no good grieving over what cannot be helped. No man has ever really loved me—because, of course, the one I was engaged to wouldn't have thrown me over just because I was poor if he had cared very much about me. And I shall be thirty-five this year—so I must—I really must"—and she gave herself an admonitory little shake—"settle down! After all there are worse things in life than being an old maid. I don't mind it—it's only sometimes when I feel inclined to grizzle, that I think to myself what a lot of love I've got in my heart—all wasted!"