“Yes,” she answered, defiantly.
“Well, I don’t care about fool laws––they are 265 mighty thin stuff. I love you,” he told her with quiet emphasis.
Mary did not answer but the purple of the eyes changed back to stormy gray.
“Why don’t you say something? Abuse me, claim me–––”
“I haven’t the courage even if I have the right,” she said, presently. “Besides, the last year I have been loving an ideal––the Steve O’Valley who existed one time and might still exist if other things were equal. But in reality you are a prematurely nerve-shattered, blundering pirate; not my Steve.” She spoke his name softly. “The failure of my ideal––and it’s a little hard to live with and work with such a failure. My hands are tied, yet my eyes see. Besides, there is Luke to think about and care for until some other woman does it. I cannot endure this tangle; neither can I get you out of it. So I am going away. And I’ll keep on loving my ideal and find the old-lavender-and-star-dust sort of peace.”
“You are not going!” he repeated, sharply, taking her hand. “Do you hear? I love you. I have loved you enough to keep silent about it ever since that day. Does it mean nothing to you?”
“Don’t say it again––it is so hopeless, part of the tangle. You haven’t the faintest idea how hopeless it is; you are so involved you cannot judge. My boy, don’t you see that the whole trouble lies in getting things you have never earned? The sort of joy you people indulge in and try to hold as your own is a state of mind and emotion from which no lessons may be learned––calm, stagnant pools of superlative surface pleasure. No one learns things worth while 266 when he is too happy or too successful. That is why success is a wiser and more enduring thing when it comes at middle age. The young man or woman has not been tried out, has not had to struggle and discover personal limitations. It’s the struggle that brings the wisdom.
“But when you have a ready-made stock-market fortune handed to you, and a Gorgeous Girl wife, and the world comes to fawn upon you––you soon become intoxicated with a false sense of your own achievements and values. It does not last––nor does it pay. Such joy periods are merely recuperative periods. By and by something comes along and bumps into you and you are shoved out into the struggling seas––the learning and conquering game. It is not a sad state of affairs––but a mighty wise one. Then how can you, who have never earned, expect a joy to be yours forever?”
“You have struggled and earned. You have the right to love me!”
“Perhaps––but you cannot hide behind my skirts and claim the same right. I shall give you up. Why, this is no tragedy––it is the way many commercial nuns find their lives are cast. Commercial nuns, like their religious sisters, serve a novitiate––their vocation being tested out. We who find that the things of our fancy are husks leave them behind and go on in our abilities. We are needed women to-day; we must have recognition and respect. We possess a certain unwomanly honesty according to old standards, which makes us say such things as I have said to you. I love you, the ideal of you; yet I am hopeless to realize it. I refuse to keep on making my petty moan for sympathy when all the time 267 the bigger part of me demands work and contentment––and things just like Gorgeous Girls.”