She turned away from the glass, and covered her face with her hands. She was no heroine, only a woman; and she could not help mourning over the fact that her youth was gone and her beauty with it.
Yet what had youth and beauty done for her?—what? Had they not led her into temptation? Had she not wept such tears, whilst her eyes were bright, and her face round, and her cheeks blooming, as she hoped never to shed again till the day of her death?
Had her very loveliness not brought such suffering upon her as had wrought the wreck she was? Why should she mourn because she had no attractions left to charm the man who once loved her so passionately? Why was it so terrible to her now to realise the full force of the truth which had glimmered across her understanding that night when she sat looking through the darkness down over Tordale?
She had owned one life—on this side of the grave she could never own another. In the eyes of the world she had made a very good thing of it; she had married well, she had associated well, she had succeeded to the Keller property; her husband also had left her abundantly provided for; she had done well so far as money was concerned, but for all that Phemie knew, now when she sat looking—not through the darkness down upon Tordale, but back through the years to her girlhood—that her life had been a lost one, that although there were plenty more lives in the world still to be lived out and made much of or spoiled—enjoyed or marred—yet there could be no second existence for her, no return of the years, no retracing of her steps, no re-writing the book, no erasing the past.
Do you comprehend at last the story I have been trying to tell?—the story which has had in it so little of variety or excitement, but yet that was after all the tale of a woman’s life—of a woman who, like the rest of us, whether man or woman, had but one—and spoiled it! In the world’s great lottery, as I said early in these pages, her little investment might seem a mere bagatelle; but it was the whole of her capital notwithstanding.
And she had lost! Looking back, this conviction forced itself upon her; she had lost, and it was too late for her to hope for a profit in the future.
Had she hoped? had she still clung to the idea of that man loving her? had she believed they might again meet for once, as of old, and then part? What had she thought? what had she hoped till she looked critically at herself in the unflattering mirror?
My reader, I cannot tell—though that was an hour when Phemie tried hard to understand herself, to comprehend why she had wished to stay—why she now wished to go.
All that passed swiftly and sharply through her heart, it would be well nigh impossible for any one to imagine. She could not have told herself aught save this—that her part was played out, on a stage where every step had proved a failure; that there was literally nothing more left for her to do, save walk behind the scenes, and leave the ground clear for those who had still to act out their life’s drama—ill or well, as the case might be.
She rose and stood in the middle of her room irresolute. Should she go? should she not go? should she play the hostess in Marshlands for the last time? remain to greet the new owner and then pass away like the old year? or should she follow the bent of her own inclination and avoid this meeting?