Cassandra interposed with a sharp-cut question.
“What do you mean by ‘the best’?”
“From her point of view,—that he should eventually marry her, and make the best of what remains. It’s pretty hard on a girl of twenty-four to know that her lover has to nerve himself up to take her like a disagreeable tonic which may eventually do him good. I could not have stood it; I’m quite sure you couldn’t, but Teresa can. The bull-dog quality in her won’t let go; she can sit tight and wait, and it’s the waiters who win. She will go through a bad time, but in the end—” Grizel met Cassandra’s flashing eyes, and said gently, “Dear! if you had the choice, wouldn’t you rather think of him in the future with a home and children, happy again, if not just in the same way, rather than as a lonely man, eating his heart out for what he couldn’t have?”
“No!” cried Cassandra defiantly. “No! I want him to remember. I want him to think. I’d rather anything happened than that he should forget...”
Then Grizel laughed, a soft, tender little laugh, and looking back on that scene in the days which followed, Cassandra knew that more than for any words of comfort, she was grateful for that laugh. There was in it the tenderness which a nurse bestows upon the railings of pain-racked sufferers, and with it a beautiful incredulity which refused to believe mere words, and set her faith on the force within, content to wait until it should resume the mastery.
The task of a comforter is only less difficult than that of the sufferer himself. He has need of infinite tenderness, infinite tolerance, above all, of infinite patience. Not in one hour, or one week, or one month will his solace work its effect; again and again must he open his heart, and pour forth all that is his of wisdom, and strength and inspiration, only to find himself thrown back to the very position from which he started.
“Oh, Grizel!” cried Cassandra sharply. “Why did you come? Why did you interrupt us? And oh, what are we to do? What shall we do?”