“I do not know that I am wishing for any thing—to night. I am learning to wait.”
“Yes, you are! You are wishing for something that isn’t in this world, I know.”
“Then I’ll find it in heaven.”
“People don’t sigh after heaven as a usual thing. You read too many books, that’s what’s the matter with you. Reading too many books affects different people in different ways; I’ve seen a good deal of girls’ reading.”
Tessa’s pen was scribbling initials on a half sheet of paper.
“I know the symptoms. Some girls when they read love-stories become dissatisfied with their looks; they look into the glass and worry over their freckles or their dark skins, or their big mouths or turn-up noses; they fuss over their waists and try to squeeze them slim and slender, and they cripple themselves squeezing their number four feet into number two shoes. But you are not that kind. And some girls despise their fathers and mothers because they can’t speak grammar and pronounce long words, and because they say ‘care’ for carry and ‘empt’ for empty! And they despise their homes and their plain, substantial furniture. But you are not that kind either. Your face is well enough, and your father and mother are well enough, and your home is well enough.”
Tessa was scribbling Dunellen, then she wrote R. T. and Nan Gerard.
“And you are not sighing for a lordly lover,” continued Aunt Theresa, with increasing energy “You don’t want him to wear a cloak or carry a sword. Your trouble is different! You read a higher grade of love-stories, about men that are honorable and true, who would die before they would tell a lie or say any thing that isn’t so. They are as gentle as zephyrs; they would walk over eggs and not crack them; they are always thinking of something new and startling and deep that it can’t enter a woman’s mind to conceive, and their faces have different expressions enough in one minute to wear one ordinary set of muscles out; and they never think of themselves, they would burn up and not know it, because they were keeping a fly off of somebody else; they are so high and mighty and simple and noble that an angel might take pattern by them. And that is what troubles you. You read about such fine fellows and shut the book and step out into life and break your heart because the real, mannish man, who is usually as good as human nature and all the grace he has got will help him be, isn’t so perfect and noble as this perfect man that somebody has made out of his head. You can’t be satisfied with a real human man who thinks about himself and does wrong when it is too hard to do right, even if he comes on his bended knees and says he’s sorry and that he’ll never do such a thing again. You want to love somebody that you are proud of; you are too proud to love somebody that is as weak as you are. And so you can’t be satisfied at all! Why must you be satisfied?”
“Why should I not be?”
“For the best reason in the world; to be satisfied in any man, in his love for you and in your love for him, would be—do you know what it would be? It would be idolatry.”