She turned to her at last.
“Bid,” she whispered brokenly, “you know I trust you. You know what I think of you! Only—only—I am afraid—afraid of the years to come. Oh, Bid, laws are terrible things to disobey! One suffers—”
“Yes. One suffers. I don’t expect to escape suffering,” Bridget answered steadily. “I don’t think I even want to.”
“You—you are thinking of your mother?” Mrs. Trelawney hesitated.
Bridget moved restlessly, and frowned. She plucked up a handful of grass with nervous fingers, looked at it absently, a moment, then threw it from her, with an impatient gesture.
“Yes. Mother, of course!” she returned, raising her head with a jerk; “but I have thought it all out, Helen! Mother mustn’t spoil my life. I have Larry to think of—and myself. It sounds horrible—hateful, I know!” she went on hastily; “but what am I to do? I realize at last that it’s hopeless to expect that mother will ever understand. I must take my own path in spite of her, if I don’t want my life spoiled—incomplete—of no use to me or any one else!” There was silence. “I dread to tell her,” Bridget said at last. She stirred again restlessly, and the frown on her face deepened. There was a note of half reckless defiance in her tone that Helen did not understand.
“You see,” she went on after a pause, and her face cleared, “I have at least no religious scruples to overcome. Dear!” she broke off earnestly, putting out her hand towards her friend with a deprecatory movement. “You understand how I say this? I know what you believe, and I’m glad you believe it, if it makes you happier. I don’t say it arrogantly, Helen, but simply as a fact. I won’t even pretend to be sure there is a God, and so—”
Helen raised her head, as if to speak.
“Ah, yes. I know what you are going to say!” Bridget exclaimed, “that from my standpoint life is too terrible—too full of despair! It may be. But because one feels that to be true, must one necessarily believe? I can’t. We’ve talked of this often before. It is only one other awful fact in this life of ours which holds so much that is terrible. But,” she added immediately, with a smile, “I won’t abuse life, or the world. It is awful; but it’s beautiful too.”
She paused. Her eyes travelled over the sea of sweet-scented flowers, up to the little gray church on the hill, and beyond it to the burning blue of the sky.