"But she exists; don't worry. And any man worth his title is certain to encounter her sooner or later."
The girl, flushed, dumb, watched her out of wide gray eyes in which the unshed tears had dried. The pretty matron slowly shook her head:
"Because you once bit into tainted fruit you laid the axe to the entire orchard. What nonsense! Rottenness is the exception; soundness the rule. But you concluded that the hazard of bad fortune—that the unhappy chance of your first and only experience—was not an exception but the universal rule.... Very well; think it! He'll get over it some time, but you never will, Strelsa. You'll remember it all your life.
"For I tell you that we women who go to our graves without having missed a single pang—we who die having known happiness and its shadow which is sorrow—the happiness and sorrow which come through love of man alone—die as we should die, in deep content of destiny fulfilled—which is the only peace beyond all understanding."
The girl lowered her head and, resting her cheek on Molly's shoulder, looked down at the baby garment on her knees.
"That also?" she whispered.
"Yes.... Unless we pass that way, also, we can never die content.... But until a month ago I did not know it.... Strelsa—Strelsa! Are you never going to know what love can be?"
The girl rose slowly, flushing and whitening by turns, and stood a moment, her hands covering her eyes.
And standing so:
"Do you think he will go away—from me—some day?"