Ruth gave her a startled look.
"Perhaps it's because I haven't had from life itself much of what I'd like to have," Annie was going on, "that I've made a world within. Can't let life cheat us, Ruth," she said brightly. "If we can't have things in one way—have to get them in another."
Again Ruth looked at her in that startled way. Annie did not see it, reaching over for more asparagus; she was all the time working along in that quick, sure way—doing what she was doing cleverly and as if it weren't very important. "Perhaps, Ruth," she said after a minute, "that that's why my school-girl fancy for you persisted—deepened—the way it has." She hesitated, then said simply: "I liked you for not letting life cheat you."
She looked up with a quick little nod as she said that but found Ruth's face very serious, troubled. "But I don't think I've done what you mean, Annie," she began uncertainly. "I did what I did—because I had to. And I'm afraid I haven't—gone on. It begins to seem to me now that I've stayed in a pretty small place. I've been afraid!" she concluded with sudden scorn.
"That isn't much wonder," Annie murmured gently.
"But with me," she took it up after a little, "I've had to go on." Her voice went hard in saying it. "Things would have just shut right down on me if I would have let them," she finished grimly.
"I married for passion," she began quietly after a minute. "Most people do, I presume. At least most people who marry young."
Ruth colored. She was not used to saying things right out like that.
"Romantic love is a wonderful thing," Annie pursued; "I suppose it's the most beautiful thing in the world—while it lasts." She laughed in a queer, grim little way and gave a sharp twist to the knot she was tying. "Sometimes it opens up to another sort of love—love of another quality—and to companionship. It must be a beautiful thing—when it does that." She hesitated a moment before she finished with a dryness that had that grim quality: "With me—it didn't.
"So there came a time," she went on, and seemed newly to have gained serenity, "when I saw that I had to give up—go under—or get through myself what I wasn't going to get through anyone else. Oh, it's not the beautiful way—not the complete way. But it's one way!" she flashed in fighting voice. "I fought for something, Ruth. I held it. I don't know that I've a name for it—but it's the most precious thing in life. My life itself is pretty limited; aside from the children"—she softened in speaking of them—"my life is—pretty barren. And as for the children"—that fighting spirit broke sharply through, "they're all the more reason for not sinking into things—not sinking into them," she laughed.