In love of locality Cartice was a tree, and frequently said so. Her pleasure would have been to live always in one place, taking deeper root every day, and loving the soil that sustained her. Doubtless because this was her nature, fate decreed that she should have no chance to take deep root anywhere, for her own good.
Those days of inward groaning and tree-like clinging to a spot of which she had long been weary, reminded her of other days, now years in the past, when she had uprooted herself from the only peaceful bit of life she had known, to go forth and marry Louis Doring and become sister to misery.
Then she had swayed and clung and groaned day after day, only to yield at last to the force that ruled her destiny, and she knew she must do the same now.
A time came, however, when the human tree lay prone, its uprooting an accomplished fact. Its roots, bared to the sun and wind, trembled a little, but the groaning was over.
Now there was nothing to do but tell Chrissalyn and go.
The Butterfly paled as she heard the decision.
“I have known this for a long time,” she said, “long before you knew it yourself, but I would not speak of it, lest you might be guided by what I said. I learned it by the inside way that things are told me so often. It’s hard for me to have you go; but I understand, and believe it’s for the best. Does any one else know?”
“Not yet. I don’t tell others, even good friends, because they will ask questions about my plans and dig my very heart out of my body to find out all about what I am going to do. In the first place I don’t know. In the second I should not care to tell if I did. Telling spoils everything for me. Why do people make inquisitions of themselves and torture others merely to gratify an idle curiosity?”
“Cartice”—Chrissalyn spoke a little cautiously—“in the face of what you have been saying, and knowing that your temper is not seraphic, I will say I wish I knew for sure that you would have something to hold on to, when you get to New York.”
“Chriss, dear, I must find something, that’s all there is to it. Must. That word is a magnet drawing whatever it demands. Whenever we MUST have something, we get it.”