"But it hasn't," I protested; "I'm just stumping along."
"You haven't really had it—just being kissed once, what does that amount to?"
"Oh, Sarah, Sarah, that is what hurts me! I haven't really had it. I'm never going to. I'll just go halting like this all my life."
"No, you won't," Sarah shook her head, piecing her own knowledge slowly into comfort for me. "You remember what I told you that time when you found out about Dean and Mr. O'Farrell? There's a kind of feeling that goes with acting that is like loving, only it isn't. I don't know where it comes from. Maybe it is what they call genius, but I know you can slide off from loving into it. That is what makes Jerry think he has to be in love all the time; it is a little stair he climbs up, and then he goes sailing off. You don't think Fancy Filette really does anything for him?"
"Goodness, no; she hasn't a teaspoonful of brains!"
"Well, then," she triumphed. "After a while his genius will be so strong in him that he won't need that sort of thing and he will think it ridiculous."
"And you think that will come to me?"
"It did come. You didn't have to be in love to begin," Sarah objected.
"Sarah, I will tell you the truth! I was in love all the time, I didn't know with whom, but always wanting somebody ... trying to get through to something; trying to mate. That was it. Nights when I would do my best, and the house would be storming and cheering, I would look around for ... for somebody. And I would go to my room, and he wouldn't be there! I used to think Tommy would be He, I wanted him to be. I thought some day I would turn around suddenly and find him changed into ... whatever it was I wanted. But I know now he never could have been that. And all this summer ... I've heard it calling. I've walked and walked. Sometimes it was just around the corner, but I never caught up with it. And when I saw Helmeth Garrett, I knew!"
I had leaned back out of the circle of our small shaded lamp to make my confession, but Sarah came forward into it the better to show me the condoning tenderness of her smile.