“What have you been doing?” I asked her.
“I can’t tell you,” she told me. “You would despise me too much.”
“Why, Ellen!” I cried. “Tell me about it.”
“No! No!” she said; and she buried her face in the moss in a very agony of shame. “I can’t tell a human soul.”
And she still left me with a feeling of having had an interesting sentimental experience. Thus may we, when young, rifle sweetness from the blossom of despair.
It was communicated to the other two Zinias that Ellen’s conduct had been unbecoming a sincere old maid, and when they turned on her, instead of shame, she had for them: “I hate your society, anyway! I never did want to be an old maid!”
As I look back, this adventure closes for us a certain phase of life as definitely as though we had shut the door. We all realized, though we were not honest enough to say it aloud, that we too didn’t wish to be old maids. And all this happened because an unlovable boy had made Ellen like him. So much at the mercy of men are women! Just a shadow of the Cyprian over us and we blossomed. It was the shadow of a shadow; it had not one little objective event to give it substance, yet the Zinias withered.
CHAPTER VI
With a deep revulsion of feeling, Ellen gave up girls, sewing, and Zinias, and made a dash into childhood with Alec Yorke. Alec at this time was a strong lad of thirteen, a head shorter than Ellen. I remember even then he seemed more a person than the other boys, though at the monkey-shining age.