"Why, I should have loved you twice as much, Aunt Alice—and you know I do love you!—if you'd told me more about yourself. The people I care about are the people who live—and feel—and do things! There's verse in one of your books"—she pointed to a little bookshelf of poets on a table near—"I always think of it when mamma reads the 'Christian Year' to us on Sunday evenings—
Out of dangers, dreams, disasters We arise, to be your masters!"
"We—the people who want to know, and feel, and fight! We who loathe all the humdrum bourgeois talk—'don't do this—don't do that!' Aunt Alsie, there's a German line, too, you know it—' Was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine'—don't you hate it too—das Gemeine?" the word came with vehemence through the white teeth. "And how can we escape it—we women—except through freedom—through asserting ourselves—through love, of course? It all comes to love!—love that mamma says one ought not to talk about. I wouldn't talk about it, if it only meant what it means to Sarah and Lulu—I'd scorn to!"
She stopped—and looked with her blazing and wonderful eyes at her companion—her lips parted. Then she suddenly stooped and kissed the cold hand trying to withdraw itself from hers.
"Who was he, dear?"—she laid the hand caressingly against her cheek—"I'm good at secrets!"
Alice Puttenham wrenched herself free, and rose tottering to her feet.
"He is dead, Hester—and you mustn't speak of it to me—or any one—again."
She leant against the mantelpiece trying to recover herself—but in vain.
"I'm rather faint," she said at last, putting out a groping hand. "No, don't come!—I'm all right—I'll go upstairs and rest. I got overtired this morning."
And she went feebly toward the door.