“No,” she breathed, with her lips white, “I will never stand in his way. Because I have suffered, he shall not.” Then she laughed hysterically. “How ridiculous I am!” she said to herself. “Why, he is nothing but a child!”
The mood passed, and the woman’s soul began to dwell upon its precious memories. Mnemosyne, that guardian angel, forever separates the wheat from the chaff, the joy from the pain. At the touch of her hallowed fingers, the heartache takes on a certain calmness, which is none the less beautiful because it is wholly made of tears.
Lynn’s violin was silent now, and softly, from the back of the house, the girl’s full contralto swelled into a song.
“The hours I spent with thee, Dear Heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart—
My rosary! My rosary!”
Iris sang because she was happy, but, none the less, the deep, vibrant voice had an undertone of sadness—a world-old sorrow which, by right of inheritance, was hers.
Margaret’s thoughts went back to her own girlhood, when she was no older than the unseen singer. Love’s cup had been at her lips, then, and had been dashed away by a relentless hand.
“O memories that bless and burn!
O barren pain and bitter loss!
I kiss each bead and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross—Sweetheart! To kiss the cross!”
“‘To kiss the cross,’” muttered Margaret, then the tears came in a blinding flood. “Mother! Mother!” she sobbed. “How could you!”
Insensibly, something was changed, and, for the first time, the woman who had gone to her grave unforgiven, seemed not entirely beyond the reach of pardon.