Diana shook her head. “I think I’ve had my morning,” she answered, slowly. “It was when I couldn’t understand why people let—love and things count.”
“And now you begin to see?”
She nodded. “Well, at least I see that perhaps they can’t help it.” She looked wistfully at Mrs. Summers, her face, still babyish and immature, full of a painful foreboding. “But I dread it,” she added, almost in a whisper. “Look at Cecily. Think how much in love she was. Do you remember Robert, too?... And what has come of it all? What has been the good of it?”
“Perhaps more than you think,” Rose answered, quickly. “Love is not a thing which demands payment by result. And besides, my dear, in any case, what has that to do with you? Each of us must travel our own road, take our own risks, meet our own fate. No one else’s experience is any guide.”
Diana looked at her with big eyes, increasingly hopeful, but said nothing.
“You are sad to lose your childhood?” Rose went on after a moment, patting the girl’s arm affectionately. “I know. So was I. But it’s all in the day’s journey, Diana. Dawn is a lovely thing—but suppose one never saw the sunrise?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Diana, and two suns rose simultaneously in her eyes and set them dancing. “That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”
Rose laughed. “When is Mr. Archie Carew coming again?”
“Whenever I like,” said Diana, a little self-consciously. “Ah!” at the sound of a ring, “there’s Cis! She’ll be so glad you’re here.”
“Rose has come,” she announced before rushing into her bedroom, where she first looked into the glass with some anxiety, then rearranged the curls on her forehead, and subsequently, for no better reason than that she felt excited and not altogether unhappy, burst into tears.